ANTIPOLO City, 17 June 2006 — No surprises. The form charts held and Red Bull trampled on Barangay Ginebra as bad as the last time out last night to reach the semifinal round of the PBA Philippine Cup after a 120-98 victory before a hushed crowd at the Ynares Center here. Red Bull came out ready to play and bamboozled the Gin Kings with an offensive game plan that ran at every given opportunity as the Barako formalized their entry into the Final Four opposite San Miguel starting tomorrow.
In closing out their best-of-five quarterfinal series, 3-2, the Barako knocked the Kings out of a tournament for the second time this year counting their masterful semifinal conquest of Ginebra in the Fiesta Cup that also went the full seven games.
It was also the second straight victory for Red Bull in the series and both have been ugly with the Barako against establishing a season-high in point total for the second straight night.
Red Bull opens its best-of-seven series with the Beermen tomorrow, right after the Alaska Aces and the top-seeded Purefoods Chunkee Giants start their own Final Four clash at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao.
Red Bull thus stayed alive in its quest to win both titles staked this year. The Barako, after that Game 7 victory over Ginebra, went all the way to win the Fiesta Cup with James Penny in tow opposite Purefoods. That series also went the full seven-game route.
Yeng Guiao, in going against a cliché, refused to pull rabbits out of his hat by playing big men Mick Pennisi and Enrico Villanueva sparingly, letting his smaller players run with the high-octane Ginebra roster which proved fruitful in the end.
Cyrus Baguio, as in Game 4, fired 11 points in the first period alone and jumpstarted the Red Bull offense which refused to die until the end. The former Santo Tomas star in the UAAP also finished with a flourish and wound up with a career-high 23 points, five assists and three blocks to earn the nod from the television panel as the game’s best player.
“It was a total team effort on our part,” said Guiao later on.
Rookie Leo Najorda also had a career night with 21 points, but six of those came in the final seconds from beyond the three-point line and the result already beyond doubt.
What hurt the Kings were the 15 points that came earlier, when Najorda popped in jumpers after jumpers, giving Ginebra a dose of its own medicine as far as getting someone unheralded to contribute is concerned.
Najorda also helped in containing Eric Menk, Ginebra’s indefatigable Fil-American center who was held to the minimum for the third time in the series, which incidentally were all translated into Red Bull victories.
Menk, the reigning Most Valuable Player, hit only 5-of-19 shots to finish with 14 points, while Mark Caguioa, who came into the game averaging 27 points a contest, was held to just 17.
