Ali’s peak

Alaska man-mountain Ali Peek capped a dominating performance in the Samsung PBA Invitational Cup by winning the Best Player of the Conference (BPC) award last night.

Peek, who anchored the Aces’ swashbuckling run that came to an end only in Game One of their best-of-three title showdown with the Coca-Cola Tigers, topped the statistical race and gained the lion’s share of the media votes in winning the coveted award over Rudy Hatfield and teammates John Arigo, Don Allado, Rob Duat and Mike Cortez.

Hatfield gained the nod of the players and half of the votes of the four-man special committee in finishing strong second behind Peek.

Peek garnered a total of 2259 points as against Hatfield’s 2227, Arigo’s 1182, Allado’s 705, Duat’s 617 and Cortez’ 530.

Having won the award, Peek now became a top candidate for the season MVP award although he remains outside of the top 15 in the stats race after the All-Filipino Conference.

Only the top five players in the stats race and BPC winners are qualified to vie for the MVP trophy. Incidentally, the five leading players in the stats race after the first conference were Asi Taulava, Hatfield, Jimmy Alapag, Harvey Carey and Jeffrey Cariaso.

Peek averaged 19.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, 1.7 steals and 1.5 blocks in the Invitationals. He’s No. 2 in field-goal shooting percentage behind Talk n Text’s Felix Belano, shooting at an impressive average of 62.1 percent per game.

He had five double-double games and was named Best Player of the Game four times in their amazing nine-game winning streak that sent them to the finals against the Tigers.