To the naked eye, the last two games of the ongoing PBA Philippine Cup finals series between Purefoods and Alaska have been pretty much alike. They have been low-scoring games, with Purefoods pulling out the win at the last possessions.

The scores have been low because these teams play slow; as j_myxx of Patay ang Butiki pointed out in the comments of my post about game 1, these are the two slowest teams in the league. However, adjusting the scores for pace shows that the two games were vastly different: game 2 was a wild shootout, with each team going over the 100-point efficiency mark, while game three was a defensive struggle, as Purefoods barely topping 90 points while holding Alaska to 89.

	PF PTS	ALA PTS	PF EFF EFF	ALA EFF	POSS
Game 2	86	85	102.41	101.22	83
Game 3	79	78	90.78	89.63	87

The data is even more interesting when looking at Purefoods’ last six games (all wins), dating back to its semifinals series against San Miguel. Two things stand out: Purefoods is playing at its preferred slow pace, and there’s no rhyme or reason for their wins.



They’ve been winning in hoop-burning shootouts, and they’ve been winning in ugly defensive battles. To put it more succinctly, Ryan Gregorio’s boys have been finding ways to win ballgames.

Last night was no different. With James Yap and Kerby Raymundo (well, especially Kerby Raymundo) shooting miserably from the field, bench players Peter June Simon (in the first half) and KG Canaleta (in the second half) stepped up and hit big shots. Credit really must go to Purefoods coach Ryan Gregorio for sticking with those two guys and giving them the green light to shoot, even if it means allowing Canaleta to hoist up turnaround, fadeaway three-pointers. Also, Gregorio played Simon at point guard for a stretch in the first half, allowing the struggling super-sub to have the ball in his hands to run the pick-and-roll and shoot over LA Tenorio. Rookie Rico Maierhofer had a good stretch too, slithering his way to easy baskets around the hoop.

It helps Purefoods’ cause that they have Marc Pingris and Rafi Reavis wreaking havoc on the boards. It just brings such a different dynamic to the game for a shooter to know that he can throw it up, because he has those guys hanging around the paint waiting to clean up his mess.

Alaska started out fairly strongly, matching up with Purefoods with their own big-ball lineup, as Tim Cone inserted Reynel Hugnatan to start the game in lieu of Tony de la Cruz. The move forces Purefoods to guard Hugnatan with their small forward (usually Marc Pingris), which means Sakuragi couldn’t go out and harass either of Alaska’s guards out in the perimeter. Unlike with dela Cruz, Purefoods can’t get away with guarding Hugnatan with James Yap.

But big ball only works when you can actually go with a big lineup, and Alaska couldn’t go big when Sonny Thoss got into foul trouble. I’ve mentioned before in my post about Alaska and in my FHM preview that Thoss might be the Aces’ most important player, and it was on full display last night, as Purefoods feasted on them when he was on the bench. This is why the Samigue Eman pickup could potentially be so great for Alaska, because if the big guy can develop, the Aces wouldn’t have to take such a big hit when Thoss is chilling on the bench.

One more thing I’d like to note about the game last night was LA Tenorio starting to pull all his crap again. The flopping, the flailing, the posturing, the ‘incidental’ forearms he leaves on his defender before getting the ball on the inbounds, and just his general smarmy douchiness. He was in tip-top OA Tenorio form all game long, and I think that he squandered all of Alaska’s karma after game 2. The basketball gods do not suffer douchebags gladly.

Alaska now faces very tall odds in this series. Will they win? Probably not. Can they win? Since we started with some stats stuff, let me throw out this old post from ESPN’s John Hollinger writing about 0-3 comebacks in the NBA:

All 83 times that a team has taken a 3-0 lead in an NBA best-of-seven playoff series, it has gone on to win the series.

But somebody is going to be the first to buck the trend. It happened for the first time in baseball with the Red Sox a few years ago, and inevitably it will happen in basketball, too.

And when would it happen? Most likely with a team that's basically as good as its opponent.

The logic applies too in the PBA. If a comeback from a 0-3 deficit were to happen – and at this point, the chances are very, very slim – it would happen when two teams are evenly matched. Patay ang Butiki noted that, before the series, each team had practically the same point-differential over its opponents. Statistically, the teams were about the same. You can’t get more evenly-matched than that.