Key to winning Game 2 is staying sharp, says Cone

AFTER 30 previous appearances in a title series, Barangay Ginebra coach Tim Cone is not one to get carried away despite an impressive conquest of the enemy.

“You take everything with a grain of salt,” Cone said after a 102-87 ripping of Meralco in Lucena on Friday, which he said would not necessarily be what the rest of the best-of-seven series for the PBA Governors’ Cup would be about.

“This is not representative of anything as the series goes on.”

The Gin Kings dominated all the way and belied all pre-series forecasts of at least that game being close, as Ginebra pummeled Meralco defensively and forced the tournament’s best three-point shooting team to fire blanks practically all night.

But Cone believes that they caught the Bolts in their off night, and, talking from experience obviously, would want his charges to be on their guard when Game 2 is played today at 7 p.m. at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.

“We just got them on a night where they were a bit rusty,” the two-time Grand Slam champion said.

“The key for us right now is to stay sharp and fresh,” he went on as he braces for a Meralco fightback. “They are going to have a lot of emotion (coming from a Game 1 loss) and we need to match that emotion.”

Meralco shot itself in the foot by firing bricks from long range.

The top three-point shooting team in the league made just three triples in the first half and finished with an 8-for-34 clip, and this is something which coach Norman Black said needs to be addressed for his Bolts to stand a chance against the hulking Kings.

“We shot poorly from the perimeter,” Black said. “We also took too many (three-pointers). We average just around 21 (per game) but took about 35.”