How good Rain or Shine is as a basketball team?
Since reassuming the head coaching post of the Elasto Painters two years ago, veteran bench tactician Yeng Guiao is now starting to get convinced at how good his team has become and on Saturday night against a crack Meralco squad, Rain or Shine validated it with a grind-it-out, come-from-behind 96-95 victory at the Ynares Center in Montalban, Rizal.
“We struggled, mostly in the second half. Going to the last few minutes of regulation time, I thought our chances of winning is really low in terms of probability, mababa talaga,” said Guiao during the post-game interview. “But we were just asking the guys to give it their best. Just compete.”
According to Guiao, winning a game is easy when playing well, but finding ways to win when things were not going your way, yet looking to resolve situations, is a mark of a good team — and in their very first game of the league’s 50th season, the Elasto Painters were able to validate that.
“If you can do anything right, it’s easy to win games,” added Guiao. “But when you’re struggling, when a lot of things are not going right and you still find a way to win, that’s really the time that you know you had a good team. We feel we have a good team. We struggled. We almost lost the game — and it was actually looking like a losing game in the last three or four minutes — but we found a way.”
“That’s character. You know you have a good team when in spite of a lot of things not going your way, you still find a way to win. That’s a sign that we have a really good group. We beat a really tough team and I feel Meralco, even if they’ve lost two games, they will still figure in this conference,” added Guiao.
Meralco defeated Rain or Shine in the first preseason, out-of-town match in Ilagan, Isabela, a few days ago, and somehow, the Elasto Painters used that as an opportunity to study their opponents, but the Bolts had been practically dominating their rivals for the most part of the second half.
The Bolts led by as much as 16 points, 81-65, outscoring the Elasto Painters, 37-20, in the third period, but Rain or Shine managed to fight back in the fourth when it held Meralco to only nine markers.
But even when the Elasto Painters made a game out of it, they were not out of the woods yet until Caelan Tiongson and Gabe Norwood made big plays — offensively and defensively.
Rain or Shine was still trailing by nine, 80-89, breaching the last five-minute mark, until Tiongson came up with a huge four-point play to kick off an 8-0 spurt by the Elasto Painters and shoved his team within striking distance, 17.7 seconds remaining in regulation.
A defense-oriented player, Tiongson was turned to a scorer on Saturday where finished with a double-double game of 23 points, 10 rebounds and two four-point plays. His last four-ball kept the Elasto Painters in the thick of the fight.
And then, there’s Norwood, the Elasto Painters’ playing assistant coach, who only a few days ago announced that this conference is his final flight in the PBA.
His crucial putback off a missed short stab by his teammate, Adrian Nocum, sent the game to overtime, but more than the impact of that follow-up shot, it was the former George Mason University stalwart’s solid presence on both ends of the court, which were highly appreciated more.
On defense, he made big stops either against Bong Quinto and Chris Newsome, but the biggest bonus were his 11-point contribution.
