Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, October 20) — The Meralco Bolts evened up their series against Barangay Ginebra, 85-83, in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Governors’ Cup Finals on Friday at the Big Dome.
The series now stands tied at 2-2 in their best-of-seven series.
Allen Durham led Meralco with 28 markers and 18 boards, while Chris Newsome slotted in with 18 points and 11 rebounds.
There was little separating the two protagonists, with Meralco holding a slim 41-40 edge over Ginebra going into the halftime break.
The game came down to the last few possessions of the game, after Ginebra import Justin Brownlee tied the game at 83-all with a pair of free throws at the 1:07 mark of the payoff period.
Durham gave Meralco the lead with a lay-in with 47 ticks left to play, before forcing Ginebra to miss in their succeeding possession.
With 20 seconds left to play Jared Dillinger saw a lay-in blocked by a trailing Sol Mercado, which gave Ginebra one last shot to either tie or win the ball game.
Ginebra turned to Brownlee with the its last possession, but he was unable to find the bucket to extend the contest.
Brownlee scored a game-high 34 points, but could not gift Ginebra the win.
After being two games down in the series, Meralco head coach Norman Black was happy to climb out of that hole.
“It’s a great win to tie the series,” Black said. “To come back to tie them after being down two zero is a big morale booster for us.”
“We have a series now, guys,” he added.
The series goes to Bulacan on Sunday for Game 5 at the Philippine Arena.
