Ginebra head coach Tim Cone couldn’t offer much in the aftermath of another loss to TNT in the PBA Season 49 Governors’ Cup Finals, Wednesday night.
All that the league’s winningest mentor could do is concede, lamenting that he’s losing the coaching battle against Chot Reyes as the Kings fell to a 0-2 hole in the race-to-4 series after absorbing a 96-84 defeat in Game 2.
“You don’t need to be a genius to see what’s going on. I’m totally outcoached and outclassed by Chot,” he told reporters moments after emerging from the team’s dugout at the SMART Araneta Coliseum, visibly in a somber mood.
It sure was a tough loss to process for Cone and the Barangay, especially after a promising start to the match where they raced to a 21-11 lead before finishing the opening period holding a slim four-point advantage.
However, the Tropang Giga responded hugely in the following frame, unloading 30 points – 12 more than what the crowd darlings managed to chalk up in the chapter.
That let them establish a 49-41 lead entering the halftime intermission.
Momentum would swing the defending champions’ way since, to the point that a Ginebra rally in the third hardly bothered the unit on the floor.
The Kings already took a 57-51 lead but Roger Pogoy, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and Calvin Oftana strung together an 8-0 reply to take the lead back.
It was during that stretch when TNT head coach Chot Reyes refused to call a timeout as he wanted his wards to find solutions on their own, which they did.
“I always tell my players, ‘If you dig a hole for yourselves, make sure you know how to dig yourselves out of that hole,‘” said Reyes. “So I said, ‘You put yourselves in that hole, figure it out. Solve the problem.'”
Ginebra could only play catch-up ball the rest of the way, with Hollis-Jefferson and Glenn Khobuntin delivering the most important three-pointers inside the final 3:13 of the game as it knocked the sails out of the Barangay.
Cone’s wards fell victim to the hot outside shooting of their foes as the Tropa nailed 14 in the win, six of which came from RHJ – his PBA career-high.
The reigning Best Import finished with 37 points, 13 rebounds, and seven assists as he made the Kings pay for leaving him open from deep.
Ginebra, meanwhile, made only half TNT’s threes on 27 tries. After two games, it has only made nine from that distance on a poor 18.75-percent accuracy.
“Rondae’s amazing,” said Cone of the very same player they frustrated in the 19th Asian Games that saw Gilas beat Jordan in the men’s basketball finale.
Now it’s all about trying to see what could be worked on for Ginebra heading into the extremely crucial Game 3 on Friday at the Big Dome, still.
“We’ll try to figure out what’s going on,” said Cone. “But right now, we’re being totally outcoached. I feel bad for our players because I’m not helping them out at all.”
