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Thursday, June 16, 2005
Chargers, Aces take Game 1
Ajani Williams dished out his finest game in the conference so far as the Shell Turbo Chargers displayed a lot of grit in an 86-79 victory over the Purefoods TJ Hotdogs in Game 1 of their best-of-three quarterfinals in the Gran Matador-PBA Fiesta Conference at the Araneta Coliseum.
In the other game, the Alaska Aces sputtered and stumbled their way to victory in Game 1 of their own quarterfinals series against the Red Bull Barako, 89-80.
Jeffrey Cariaso, Dickey Simpkins and Reynel Hugnatan banged in 20 points apiece to lead the Aces to just a game shy of barging into the semifinal round.
In a game between two title-hungry teams, the Turbo Chargers appeared to be more motivated.
Lead all the way
Led by Williams and Tony dela Cruz, the Turbo Chargers came out like a well-oiled Ferrari, racing to a 23-10 lead after the first 12 minutes of play and never looked back from there.
“We had a good start and I thought that was the key because Purefoods pushed themselves to catch up and in doing so lost steam when the going got tough,” said Shell coach Leo Austria.
“And Ajani provided the team with a lot of inspiration. He said he wanted to win and didn’t want to go home just yet.”
Given little chance to reach this far after a series of misfortunes due to import problems, the ninth-seeded Turbo Chargers are slowly proving the unbelievers wrong. They are now 3-0 in the playoffs and could cement their place in the semifinals with another victory tomorrow at the Ynares Center.
Aggressive defense
Against the Hotdogs, the Turbo Chargers dictated the tempo of the game with aggressive defense, strong rebounding and their ability to get everyone involved.
But no one stood taller than the 6-foot-10 Williams. He made his presence felt on every play and completely asserted his height in the paint on the way to 27 points, 20 rebounds.
He highlighted his impressive performance with four key blocks – all on Purefoods import Melvin Marcus.
“We carefully studied Purefoods’ stats and we noticed that 45 percent of their attempts were made by Melvin. So we focused our defense on him,” said Austria. (JSV)
(June 16, 2005 issue)
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