Skippers, Saints target semis sweeps

Games today (Paco Arena, Manila)

1:30 p.m. – TIP vs Marinerong Pilipino*

3:30 p.m. – CEU vs BRT Sumisip-St. Clare*

* leads best-of-three series, 1-0

MANILA, Philippines — Marinerong Pilipino and BRT Sumisip Basilan-St. Clare look to arrange a quick finals face-off as they shoot for sweeps of TIP and CEU in the PBA D-League Foundation Cup semifinals today at the Paco Arena in Manila.

After dominating their counterparts in the opener last Thursday, the Skippers and the Saints try to continue their unblemished runs in their hopes to nail a first finals appearance for their respective franchises.

Led by ex-PBA guard Eloy Poligrates, the veteran-laden Skippers scored a 98-80 Game One romp over the Engineers while the Saints fashioned out an 86-70 rout of the Scorpions.

Both Marinero and St. Clare are not about to sit on their laurels, promising to work even harder today.

“We’re happy to be up 1-0 but we still have a lot of work ahead. We need to correct our mistakes as we tend to relax after building big leads,” said Marinero coach Yong Garcia who will bank on JR Alabanza, Dan Sara, Jhonard Clarito and Mark Yee to backstop Poligrates.

The Saints, for their part, look confident more than ever especially with a beefed-up squad this conference that sent them on cusp of a finals berth after falling short in the semis last conference against eventual runner-up CEU.

“We want to finish the series to barge into the finals already but then again, we just have to take it one game at a time,” said St. Clare mentor Stevenson Tiu.