Parks: ‘Boy, that was ugly’

Beermen lose to Warriors by 20

By JONAS TERRADO

JAKARTA, Indonesia ­- San Miguel Beer coach Bobby Parks on Saturday literally saw a nightmare instead of a grand coronation.

“Boy that was an ugly one,” Parks said upon his return to the Sunlake Hotel after the Beermen suffered an 81-61 loss to the Indonesia Warriors at Mahaka Square.

SMB had hoped to bring home the AirAsia ASEAN Basketball League crown, but the Warriors, backed by the home crowd, leaned on a quick start and a strong second quarter performance to set up the rout.

The trio of Evan Brock, Stanley Pringle and Steve Thomas had their usual outputs but the bench led by Jerick Canada and Arki Wisnu also played key roles in forcing a rubber match on June 30 at the Ynares Sports Arena in Pasig City.

The focus was there, according to Parks, but his team relied too heavily on individual plays and lacking the attitude of closing out the series.

“They were focused this week but I don’t think they had a sense of urgency like we have to come out with our backs against the wall,” said Parks. “My battlecry to the team all week was to execute. That’s very important when you play against this good of a team on the road.”

“But we came out not running our plays, not sticking to the gameplan and we played into our weaknesses instead of playing to our strengths,” he added.

San Miguel trailed 10-4 at the start but managed to hold a slim 17-13 lead behind Duke Crews, Nick Fazekas and Chris Banchero. But the three, along with Leo Avenido and the supporting cast, were silent the rest of the way.

“I think with the way we started, we weren’t running plays and played one-and-one and we have some turnovers coupled with that with say Duke (Crews) getting into foul trouble and some rebounds that we should have had but instead went out of bounds.”

“It was like whatever could go wrong, went wrong,” he added. “And everytime we try to make a run, there was a charging foul or something and those were momentum breakers.”

“That’s why I keep on harping about execution. Like in this game, we were more of like one pass then one shot, therefore there’s a tendency for long rebounds and (the Warriors) were off to the races.”

With some bruised egos and “good hard practices” that Parks will impose this week, the Beermen are expected to make a bounce back effort in the jugular.