Ginebra could not fully celebrate its Game One win over NLEX in the 2022 PBA Governors’ Cup semifinals on Wednesday night.
The Gin Kings lost Japeth Aguilar barely two minutes into the third quarter due to an apparent calf injury.
Match paused at the 10:43-mark as the 6-foot-9 forward sat on the floor, visibly in pain. He landed on his left leg after trying to block the jumper of Road Warriors import Cameron Clark from near the left baseline.
He was seen clutching on his left calf with the aid of teammates Scottie Thompson and Jeff Chan, before heading back into the bench.
Aguilar never returned the game and left with just four points and five rebounds to his name. He played for a total of 19 minutes and 31 seconds.
“I’d be really happy right now and excited that we got Game One. But it’s kinda tempered because we lost Japeth and we don’t know the status of Japeth yet,” said head coach Tim Cone after their 95-86 win.
Compounding the woes of the 23-time champion mentor was that Aguilar had already been hurt during their quarterfinal series against TNT.
“He went out with a calf injury that he suffered actually originally in our game against Talk ‘N Text,” he said.
“Calf injuries are really difficult.”
Cone admitted that the team has yet to know the extent of Aguilar’s injury, thus the importance of getting the first game of the best-of-five series since it would give them some sort of an edge while waiting for the 35-year-old’s status.
“It was really important that at least we got the first game so we kinda have that margin for error playing without Japeth for the rest of the way,” he said.
“We don’t know the status of Japeth yet. We really won’t know that until tomorrow because we’ll have to see how much it swells, how much pain he has, and we won’t know that until tomorrow,” he added.
Still, Cone has his fingers crossed that everything will turn out fine for Aguilar, who’s averaging 15.1 points and 6.1 boards prior.
“But hopefully, we got it early and it didn’t get really bad. I haven’t talked to the trainers yet. I don’t know if it’s a loud pop or what. As I said, I’d be very, very happy about this win, but this one was certainly tempered by Japeth’s injury.”
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