By ADRIAN STEWART CO
Pola Pilipinas RPG turned things around in the fourth quarter to defeat Hong Kong’s Vanta Black Dragons, 77-71, in the opener of The Asian Tournament-Passi leg at the City of Passi Arena in Iloilo province’s Passi City on Tuesday night, May 21.
Joseph Obasa provided a spark off-the-bench as he finished with 24 points on 8-of-8 field goal shooting to go with 12 rebounds and two blocks to give the Pola Pilipinas a winning start in the leg.
“I enjoyed it here. My teammates made it easy for me. They were very confident, and the coaches gave us the right game plan. It was a tough game, but a good win,” Obasa said in his Player of the Game interview.
“We will just give our best in each game … make a good account of ourselves. We were not given the opportunity to do that in the previous leg. Now we will try to get as many games as possible,” he added.
Down by as much as 11 points early in the game, Pola Pilipinas leaned on the tandem of Obasa and Henry Iloka to take a 63-59 lead, but Vanta Black responded with their own rally to surge ahead for the last time at 64-63.
The Mindoro-based squad answered with a finishing run behind Obasa, Iloka and Xavier Alexander to establish their largest advantage of 77-68 with less than a minute left in the game.
Meanwhile, the Macau Black Bears Mustangs leaned on the towering presence of 7-foot-3 reinforcement Samuel Deguara as they defeated Philippine squad Zamboanga Valientes, 83-78.
The Mustangs were on top for most of the opening half before the Valientes kicked off the third quarter with an 8-0 scoring run behind Rudy Lingganay to take a 48-43 advantage.
Macau continued to rely on Deguara to regain the advantage before Zamboanga answered with a barrage of treys to reclaim the lead.
However, the Mustangs got inside hits from Deguara to secure the win.
The Mustang also features Filipino cagers Alex Cabagnot, Rashawn McCarthy and Ateneo de Manila University Blue Eagles center Geo Chiu, and is also being handled by Filipino-American coach Chris Gavina./ASC, WDJ