Meralco spoils SMB’s Season 46 debut

By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña

The Meralco Bolts just pulled off a stunner and took down the revamped San Miguel Beermen team, 93-87, in the first game of the PBA Sunday schedule.

With the addition of prolific scorer CJ Perez and six-time PBA MVP June Mar Fajardo now back in the lineup for SMB, all eyes were on them immediately and had a decent opening quarter.

However, Meralco head coach Norman Black was quick with his adjustments and started to deploy different looks for the Beermen with their switching zone and man-to-man defense.

Chris Newsome was awesome once again for the Bolts and scored a game-high 17 points including a cold-blooded dagger three with 42 seconds left in the game.

Newsome’s trey helped their lead balloon to eight and made it hard for the Beermen to come back with a limited amount of time left.

Despite the addition of Perez in their lineup, the Beermen still found difficulties to score especially in the second half which the Bolts capitalized on.

Meralco’s stinging defense anchored by Raymond Almazan provided a solid lift in stopping Fajardo and Moala Tautuaa in the paint that helped them dish out easy breakaway assists in fastbreaks.

With the win, Meralco is now 2-0 in the win-loss standings while the Beermen will have to regroup and absorb their first loss of the 46^th season.