MANILA, Philippines — TNT KaTropa and Phoenix Petroleum, barely staying alive at the end of the eliminations Friday, fight for survival once again, slugging it out in a knockout setto for the eighth and last quarterfinals berth in the PBA Philippine Cup at the Smart Araneta Coliseum tonight.
The Texters and the Fuel Masters square off in a lone match at 6:30 p.m., disputing the right to play top seed San Miguel Beer in the Final 8.
With their poor elims closing cards of five wins against six losses and their inferior quotients, the two teams have found themselves in a bind, needing to survive three do-or-die matches in order to reach the semifinals.
The winner in their match tonight would then need to beat the Beermen two in a row to make the Final Four.
A hard struggle in the entire tourney put them in this tough position.
“We’ve been struggling this conference. It’s no secret; everybody’s talking about that. We just hope that our execution will be better (today),” said TNT coach Nash Racela.
“We don’t know how to finish a game. We figured in a lot of games decided at endgame. If we know how to finish a game, we’re not in the situation where we are now,” said Phoenix coach Louie Alas, hoping though that they’ve learned from their previous games.
One close endgame battle where the Fuel Masters pulled through was against the Texters, 74-72, last Feb. 7.
Matthew Wright celebrated his 27th birthday by winning that game for Phoenix on a game-tying trey then a winning feed to Doug Kramer.
Wright was again the man of the hour for the Fuel Masters in their 104-100 win over the GlobalPort Batang Pier Friday where he erupted for 32 points.
Their immediate goal now is to repeat versus the Texters to make the post-elims play in their first conference under Alas.
The Texters, for their part, are out to keep their constant playoff passage under Racela. Last season, the Texters made it all the way to the finals in one conference and the semis in the two other conferences.