Caguioa voted best player of conference

Mark Caguioa, Barangay Ginebra’s top gun who’s the tournament scoring champion, emerged as the runaway winner of the Best Player plum in the Talk n Text PBA Philippine Cup.

Caguioa, the No. 3 pick in the 2001 draft behind Willie Miller of Red Bull and Mike Hrabak of Shell, won the BPC honors over Danny Seigle, Rudy Hatfield, Kelly Williams and Willier Miller after garnering 1333 points and beating his closest rival by 203 points.

The 5-foot-10 Ginebra scoring machine gained his fourth individual award in the league after winning the Rookie of the Year honors in 2001 and making it to the Mythical Second Team the last two seasons.

Seigle was denied a third BPC award as the prolific San Miguel Fil-Am forward accumulated only 1130 points.

Hatfield came in third with 623 points, Williams fourth with 387 and Miller fifth with 378.

Caguioa emerged the runaway winner for topping the stats race and the balloting among his fellow players, the media and the PBA officials.

Only the ABC-5 votes went to Seigle.

Caguioa gave a No. 1 hand signal then pointed his fingers to the Ginebra fans when his name was announced the winner of the coveted award before Game Four of the Ginebra-San Miguel title collision last night at the Araneta Coliseum.

Picking up from where he left off last year, the Glendale Community College product has averaged 24.7 points, 4.9 rebounds and 4.4 assists a game. He averaged 25.3 points per game in the previous Philippine Cup.

He scored at least 30 points in six of their last nine games dating back to the semis.

He’s No. 7 overall in the conference in assists.