San Miguel notches first bubble win after nipping Terrafirma

By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña

 

The San Miguel Beermen are back in their winning ways after prevailing over CJ Perez and the Terrafirma Dyip, 105-98, to end their two-game bubble skid and grab their first win.

Entering the showdown banged-up due to the absences of superstars Terrence Romeo and June Mar Fajardo, the Beermen needed to have a solid outing from their main gunners which turned out to be the story of the game.

The struggling Arwind Santos finally found his shooting rhythm after scoring an average of under 5 pts for the first two games to explode for a 20-point 14-rebound double-double performance.

Mo Tautuaa also had a strong outing, able to punish every defender Terrafirma threw at him in the shaded area and dominated throughout the game and ended up with 25 points.

Terrafirma superstar Perez tried to mount his own scoring frenzy after attempting to single-handedly put his squad back in the ball game but fell short.

Perez had a solid outing after stuffing the stat sheet with 20 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 steals but the loss resulted in a winless bubble start for him and Terrafirma.

The Beermen bench also ended their shooting slump after Von Pessumal started to hit his shots from downtown and finished the game with 17 points while steady guard Paul Zamar had 11 for SMB.

“This win is really important because we’re talking about morale. If we lost this game, it would be really hard to recover,” said Beermen chief orchestrator Leo Austria.