Beermen roll to 7th straight win

Danny Seigle continued to live up to his tag as the league’s scoring leader and the San Miguel Beermen stayed on an amazing roll, pulling off a 105-99 win over the Talk n Text Phone Pals in the Gran Matador Brandy PBA Philippine Cup at the Araneta Coliseum last night.

Seigle had another explosive game with 27 points and waxed hottest in a rapid-fire assault they made at the onset of the fourth quarter to break away from a see-sawing contest.

The 6-foot-7 Fil-Am forward rattled in nine points in a decisive 19-3 run they unleashed to seize control at 100-88 entering the last two minutes of play.

"We anticipated a battle and, true enough, we fought them in a tough battle. It so happened that we ran our break at the right time," said San Miguel coach Jong Uichico as they repeated over the Phone Pals in the classification round and jacked up their front-running win-loss record to 9-2.

The Beermen stretched their hot streak to seven games with the team’s other starters in Dorian Peña, Dondon Hontiveros, Danny Ildefonso and Olsen Racela also coming up with solid all-round games.

But Seigle once again stood up for the team as he went 10-of-17 from the field and 7-of-10 at the stripe and also logged five rebounds, two assists and one steal in 31 minutes of action.

"We know who’s hot and we go to him. We’ve been playing that way for a long time now. But everybody’s doing their job defensively. So it’s still a team effort," said Uichico.

Victor Pablo actually led all scorers with 29 points but he himself lost touch in a dry spell by the Pals in the fourth quarter.

Pablo was 6-of-6 from the three-point area, 4-of-6 from the two-point zone and 3-of-7 from the stripe in his most productive game in a Talk n Text jersey the last six years.

After fighting the Beermen through eight deadlocks and nine lead changes, the Pals faded away in the fourth quarter, suffering their fifth defeat in 10 starts.

The Pals muffed seven field-goal attempts and two charities in a four-minute stretch in the payoff period where the Beermen waged a 19-3 attack. Talk n Text was 8-of-24 from the field the entire fourth quarter.

The Pals battled the Beermen on even terms on other fronts of the game.

Air21 dished out an inspired performance and carved out a 107-88 rout of Coca-Coca in the second game.

"At last, we won again. And it feels great to win specially on this day when our team owner Mr. Bert Lina is celebrating his birthday," said Air21 coach Bo Perasol.

Asi Taulava and company even had one more rebound, 48-47, and one less error, 13-14, than the Beermen.

Taulava amd Harvey Carey both churned out a double-double game with the former tallying 17 points and 11 rebounds and the latter 12 points and the same number of rebounds. Jimmy Alapag had 10 points, seven assists and six rebounds.