At the start of most PBA games, some announcer (usually Quinito Henson) would throw out some meaningless statistic like “If Purefoods holds Alaska down to less than 85 points, they’ll probably win the ballgame.” I keep waiting for them to say something like “If Purefoods holds Alaska to fewer points, they’ll probably win.” Yeah, and if they do it four times, they’ll win the series.

So I decided to crunch some numbers and apply some advanced statistics to Game 1 of the PBA Philippine Cup finals last night. I got the data from the last three games of each team, and computed for their offensive and defensive ratings, which are adjusted for the number of possessions in each game. Here’s what I found:

Alaska’s offense sputtered. In its last three games against Ginebra, Alaska scored 101.81 points per 100 possessions. Purefoods brought that number down to only 90.40 last night.



Purefoods’ defense is coming together. In games 4 and 5 of the San Miguel series, Purefoods burned the hoops by averaging 113 points per 100 possessions. However, they clinched the series with defense, holding San Miguel’s offensive rating to only 86.74 in game 6 of that series. They weren’t as great last night, but it was still pretty good.



They’re playing at Purefoods’ pace. In a way, the ‘hold them down to X points’ statistic is true, but not for the reason you think. In Purefoods’ case, it’s not so much a factor of the team defending well as much as it controlling the tempo. In each of Alaska’s last three wins over Ginebra, the game had at least 90 possessions, something that never happened during Purefoods’ games against San Miguel. Last night, the possession count was at 85, which is firmly in Purefoods’ comfort zone.



Alaska’s last four games

	TM PTS	OPP PTS	OFF EFF	DEF EFF	POSS
vs. Ginebra, Game 2	90	82	96.26	87.70	93
vs. Ginebra, Game 3	91	88	96.27	93.09	94
vs. Ginebra, Game 4	102	95	112.90	105.15	90
vs. Purefoods, Game 1	77	81	90.40	95.09	85

Purefoods’ last four games

	TM PTS	OPP PTS	OFF EFF	DEF EFF	POSS
vs. San Miguel, Game 4	97	84	113.32	98.13	85
vs. San Miguel, Game 5	94	82	113.93	99.39	82
vs. San Miguel, Game 6	87	78	96.75	86.74	89
vs. Alaska, Game 1	81	77	95.09	90.40	85

So how did Purefoods limit Alaska last night? Marc Pingris started the game on LA Tenorio, denying penetration and daring the spitfire point guard to shoot over him. Sakuragi also affected Tenorio’s passing with his long arms, blocking clean angles to passing lanes; notice how far outside the block Sonny Thoss had to go get the ball. It didn’t help that Tenorio drew the assignment to take James Yap (a matchup I talked about in a previous post), and the 2006 MVP was on fire, scoring 24 points on 14 shots.

In the second half, Pingris switched to Willie Thriller, but by then Tenorio was sufficiently cowed that he was no longer a factor. In fact, his backup, Brandon Cablay, had a better game in limited minutes.

Purefoods had great defensive energy all game, keeping their men in front of them in man-to-man sets while playing a very aggressive zone defense that extended out and stifled Alaska’s shooters. It remains to be seen, however, if they will be able to keep up this kind of defensive energy.

Curiously, this is the same defensive energy that carried Purefoods to the 2006 Philippine Cup title over Red Bull, with Pingris leading the way en route to being named finals MVP of that series. But I expect Tim Cone to come up with adjustments not just for his team to be able to score, but perhaps more importantly, to pick up the pace.