The San Miguel Beermen continued
their historic ABL run with close wins over the Thailand Slammers and the
Malaysia Dragons, gaining significant momentum towards the semifinals, while
the Indonesia Warriors also ended strong by beating the Singapore Slingers at
home. In the meantime, the Saigon Heat continued to flounder, losing to
Malaysia and Thailand before ending their campaign with an unexpected W over
the Dragons yesterday.
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| Chris Banchero leads a strong SMB five bent on bringing the ABL title back to Manila. |
As a result the past week
cemented the semifinal pairings and effectively eliminated the Slingers from
the title race (Saigon was eliminated millennia ago). The Beermen go up against
the Slammers in their best-of-five semis match-up, while the defending champion
Indonesia Warriors roll out versus the Dragons in their own race-to-three
affair.
The winners of the semis
will advance to the Finals for another best-of-five for all the marbles.
The following are league
leaders at elimination round’s end:
The top overall scorer is Saigon’s
Justin Howard with 20.4ppg, while SMB’s Chris Banchero is the best-scoring
local with 16.4ppg.
The overall rebounding
leader is Rashad Jones-Jennings of Singapore with 15.1rpg, while Asi Taulava of
San Miguel led all local players with 7.1rpg.
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| Asi Taulava was the best local rebounder in the league. |
In terms of assists,
Filipino import Froilan Baguion of Thailad led the whole league with 9.2apg,
while Banchero was the top local with 4.2apg.
For steals, Chris Daniels of
Indonesia led the way with 2.7spg even as Banchero once again was the top local
with 2.2spg.
Thailand’s Christien Charles
is the best blocker with 4.1bpg, while Taulava’s 0.7bpg was the best among
locals.
Malaysia’s Guga Batumalai
had the highest 3-point completion rate at 44.7%, while Indonesia’s Mario
Wuysang had the highest amount of three-point conversions with a total of 58.
That’s good for 2.6 threes per game for the Indon playmaker.
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| Mario Wuysang was one of the best shooters in the ABL. |
Here’s my micro-preview for
the 2013 ABL Playoffs:
1 – San Miguel Beermen versus 4 – Sports Rev Thailand
Slammers
The Beermen have been on a
magnificent winning run lately, and it’s highly unlikely the inconsistent
Slammers can stop it. Even with Chris Charles being one of the most productive
imports in the league, I don’t see Thailand winning more than one game against
the well-oiled Beermen. Heck, one might even be a stretch.
The Beermen just have too
many weapons. Brian Williams and Asi Taulava form maybe the best frontline in
the league, while Chris Banchero has been enjoying a career season. Former Best
Local awardee Leo Avenido is still solid, while other guys like Jeric Fortuna,
JR Cawaling, and Val Acuña can contribute at the drop of a hat. Justin Williams
won’t score in bunches, but his presence on the defensive end should stifle
even Charles.
The x-factor here might just
be the performance of Darius Brannon and local player Wuttipong Dasom. If they
can put together a few awesome games, then maybe the Slammers can make a good
series out of this, but, by all indications, this could be over in three games.
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| Wuttipong Dasom has to get hot if the Slammers want to make a series of their match-up with SMB. |
2 – Indonesia Warriors versus 3 – Westports Malaysia
Dragons
Now THIS is going to be a
helluva wonderful series. The match-up between Mario Wuysang and Justin Melton
at the point should be awesome, while I cannot wait to see how Stanley Pringle
and Julius Armon butt heads at the wings. I believe the teams’ respective
imports will eventually cancel each other out, which means my x-factors are
going to be Jerick Cañada and John Smith for Indonesia and Moala Tautuaa for
Malaysia.
If Cañada and Smith can
produce big numbers to backstop Wuysang and Pringle in the backcourt, then the
Indons will be plenty tough to beat, no other locals aside from Wuysang are
actually expected to produce big. On the other end, if Tautuaa can assert
himself inside against the smaller Indon frontliners, then the Dragons’ lives
will be much easier.
This is going to be a close
one. It will go five games, but, in the end, the experience of the Warriors
might be the big difference that will carry them through to the Finals. Now,
whether or not they will be able to defend their title is another thing altogether.
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| Julius Armon is a key player for the Dragons. |
Images are from AseanBasketballLeague.com.
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