The San Juan Knights thrived under pressure and subdued the Gensan Warriors, 74-66, on Saturday to become the winningest team in Manny Pacquiao presents 1xBet-MPBL 2025 Season at the Orion Sports Complex in Bataan.<\/p>\n
With the Warriors threatening at 62-63, halfway through the fourth quarter, the Knights, led by Orlan Wamar and John Galinato, broke through with an 11-2 run for their 25th win against two losses in the round-robin elimination phase of the 30-team, two-division tournament.<\/p>\n
San Juan trails only Abra Solid North (24-1) and paces Nueva Ecija (24-2) in the North Division as well as the overall standings.<\/p>\n
Wamar posted 15 points, 7 assists and 4 rebounds to run away with the best player honors as no other Knight scored in double digits, with Dexter Maiquez contributing 8 points, Nikko Panganiban 7, and Galinato, Arvin Gamboa and Kenneth Villapando 6 each.<\/p>\n
Gensan fell to 16-11 as only Joel Lee Yu ansd CJ Gonzales struck back with 14 and 10 points, respectively.<\/p>\n
The Warriors shared the fifth spot with the Basilan Starhorse Portmasters in the South Division, led by the Quezon Huskers (23-4), the Batangas City Tanduay Rum Masters (18-9), and the Rizal XentroMall Golden Coolers (17-8).<\/p>\n
The Bataan Risers battered the Sarangani Grippers, 90-62, in the second game to rise to 11-16 and virtually claim a play-in slot in the North.<\/p>\n
Bataan needs only to beat either Bacolod (4-22) or Valenzuela (6-21) to move beyond the reach of Quezon City Galeries Taipan (7-18).<\/p>\n
Mitchelle Maynes powered Bataan with 20 points, 6 rebounds and 3 steals, followed by Lorenz Capulong with 14 points, 5 rebounds and 2 assists, and Chris Javier with 11 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks.<\/p>\n
Sarangani, which got 15 points from Migs Pascual and 12 points from Larce Sunga, skidded to 9-18 and must win its two remaining games against Paranaque and Caloocan to have a chance of making the play-in round.<\/p>\n
Pasig leaned on Warlo James Batac and Jacob Galicia to nip Mindoro, 81-78, in the opener and assure itself of a play-in stint in the North.<\/p>\n
With a 12-15 record, Pasig is in 9th spot, trailing Ilagan Isabela (14-14).<\/p>\n
Batac tallied 19 points, 13 assists and 5 rebounds to clinch best player honors over Galicia, who chalked up 20 points, 13 rebounds and 2 steals.<\/p>\n
The Tamaraws knotted the count at 75 on a drive by RJ Ramirez, but John Felix Corpuz and Galicia countered with back-to-back baskets to put the Pasiguenos back on top with 1 minute and 28 seconds to go.<\/p>\n
Mindoro skidded to 14-12, but is assured of the eighth spot in the South as ninth-placer Muntinlupa cannot catch up with its 16-14 card.<\/p>\n
The Tamaraws got 19 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists from Bambam Gamalinda, 14 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists from Ino Comboy, 14 points, 7 assists, 4 rebounds and 3 steals from RJ Ramirez, and 13 points plus 5 rebounds from Jeco Barcale.<\/p>\n
The MPBL resumes on Monday with another triple-bill at the Batangas City Coliseum. The games pit Quezon City against Nueva Ecija at 4 p.m., Davao against Cebu at 6 p.m., and Batangas against Bulacan at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The San Juan Knights thrived under pressure and subdued the Gensan Warriors, 74-66, on Saturday to become the winningest team in Manny Pacquiao presents 1xBet-MPBL 2025 Season at the Orion Sports Complex in Bataan. With the Warriors threatening at 62-63, halfway through the fourth quarter, the Knights, led by Orlan Wamar and John Galinato, broke…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[105],"class_list":["post-3801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-mpbl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3803,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions\/3803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinoystep.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}