Meralco stresses ‘team basketball’ mentality in surviving Standhardinger’s explosion

MANILA, Philippines – Meralco Bolts survived another player scoring more than 40 points in a game in the PBA Philippine Cup playoffs, as Christian Standhardinger detonated for 41 points on Sunday. 

Standhardinger had a massive double-double of 41 points off of 13-of-17 field goal shooting and 15-of-23 free throws. He also had 11 rebounds and four assists. 

Despite the big performance, the Bolts held on and tied the best-of-seven semifinals after pulling away in the fourth quarter, 103-91. 

Standhardinger is the second player who waxed hot with more than 40 points in the playoffs, after Robert Bolick exploded for 48 points, five assists and four rebounds last week. 

Meralco, however, won both games. 

After the game, Bolts guard Chris Newsome stressed that basketball is a team sport and they are unfazed by huge scoring performances as long as they get the win. 

“Basketball is a team sport. There are five guys on the floor. It comes down to how you use those pieces, utilize those pieces,” Newsome told reporters. 

“We’re okay letting one guy go off if that means that everybody else is cold. At the end of the day, all we need is the win. At the end of the game, we’re the ones that prevailed and we did our job despite how many points our opponent had,” he added. 

After the Filipino-German, Mav Ahanmisi and Stanley Pringle were the only other Gin Kings who scored in double digits with 14 and 13 points, respectively. 

For the Bolts, Allein Maliksi led the charge with 25 points, while Newsome had 20. 

Cliff Hodge and Chris Banchero supplied 13 and 11 markers, respectively. 
“That’s the main thing — it's team basketball for us, and we’re doing what we have to do as far as game planning goes, to get the win.” 

For his part, head coach Luigi Trillo acknowledged that the PBA is full of good players — and Standhardinger is one of them. 

“If you give [Newsome] a chance to score 30, he’s gonna score 30. Stan’s the same way, he’s built the same way… But that’s very important, what New said. I’m sure Ginebra has a game plan, they want to take some things away from us and we have a game plan too.” the coach said.

“But, I’m proud of our guys fought today, our bigs, multiple guys on him. New keeps on talking about that, Coach Nenad keeps on talking about that. Again, we’re gonna have our hands full because you know they’re gonna come prepared,” he added. 

“Standhardinger’s gonna try to score, he’s gonna try to free up the other guys and you know, pick your poison.” 

The two teams will try to get the upper hand when they face each other once again on Wednesday at the Dasmarinas Arena.