Game One loss breaks Cone's heart

MANILA, Philippines – Tim Cone was heartbroken on Valentine’s Day.

The San Mig Super Coffee’s American mentor pinned the blame on himself for costing the Mixers the series opener of the PBA Philippine Cup Finals.

He was winning his coaching battle against Yeng Guiao until the final moments of the game.

“I feel really horrible, that was on me,” Cone said after Rain or Shine squeezed out an 83-80 on a Paul Lee stunner with nine tenths of a second left.

“This game is really sayang.”

The Mixers had every opportunity to close out the game in the final 22.7 seconds.  But lose they did.

Cone used up all his timeouts, the last one with 8.4 seconds left instructing his Mixers to go for broke and not let the Painters get another scoring chance.  But alas, it backfired when Mark Barroca went too soon for a lay-up that missed badly.

Lee grabbed the loose ball with 1.6 seconds left.

It was enough for Lee to sneak in the game winner – an eye-in-the-sky play with teammate Gabe Norwood, who threw the perfect lob pass off the inbound.

“Yeng made a brilliant play,” said Cone praising his rival. "But that game was really on me."

“I stepped out of character, I should’ve let the play go. Our guys really played hard, they gave us a chance to win it. I blew it for them," he added. 

Cone drew a technical foul for his team when he called a timeout which they no longer have resulting in a technical free throw by Lee for the final tally, 83-80.

With nine tenths of a second left and inbounding the ball from the other end, the Mixers failed to launch a decent shot at the buzzer.

“I will be losing a sleep because of this loss. I’ll be kicking my hide in tonight,” Cone said.

“Tomorrow, I’m gonna wake up fresh and get ready for Game Two.”

But if there is any consolation for Cone is the fact that his team lost by only three points despite missing 15 free throws.

“We could have won the game if we made some of our foul shots. Maybe we lack focus because the team is tired from the Ginebra series. We’ll get better in Game Two,” said Cone, who is aiming to surpass the legendary Baby Dalupan as the winningest coach if he nets his 16^th title after this series.