Yee Chun Leong
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
FZ-JURAMAS captain Esmond Tan credited his backup centre Wong Kim Guan for being key to their 70-65 comeback win over Easyway to claim Phase 1 of the YOU.C1000 Cup last night.
Trailing by 13 points and with Francis Barcellano having to sit out due to cramps with six minutes left in the game, Kim Guan entered and stepped up to turn the game around in favour of FZ-Juramas.
“The game turned around when Kim Guan got on the court and seeing him give his best effort at the defensive end to grab rebound after rebound made us know that we couldn’t give up easily until the final buzzer,” said Esmond in an interview with BruSports News after the victory.
“It was like when Stone Cold Steve Austin makes an entrance to the ring. In addition, it was his sneaky layup that changed the game and led to the comeback,” added the 35-year-old.
(In reference to a long inbounds pass to the other end of the court that caught the Easyway defence napping to cut the deficit to 61-56.)
“Our plan was to keep playing and hustling for every ball possession and eventually we had the momentum going in the last seven minutes.
“We also can’t forget our teammate Wu Chun for rallying the whole arena to get behind us and scream ‘defence’,” he continued.
When asked on what was going through their heads after letting a 19-point lead slip, Esmond replied: “With the quality of players Easyway have, we knew we had to keep playing.
“They demonstrated their hunger to win in the semis hence we knew we just got to play and give our all despite losing that big lead,” he added.
His counterpart Ben Sim felt that they pushed the self destruct button in the decisive frame.
“We got off on a hot streak and were playing fast. But when we got the big lead, we settled and stopped playing our game plan,” said Ben.
“They are a good group of guys. It showed and their experience came through,” he added.
“It could have gone either way but I wished the format was like a best of seven series because it would be fun.
“It is what it is and congrats to those guys as they played a great game,” continued Ben.
He finished the game with 14 points - half of the points coming from the freethrow line.
When asked on his personal performance, Ben replied: “It is never good enough. I don’t think that I played that well as I made some crucial misses here and there.
“I felt we could have done more. It is not about me but how the team plays. I felt we could have done better as a team,” he added.
“We will go back to the drawing board and figure out how we can play better and more like a team
“You want to get back at the court as soon as possible after something like that,” he concluded.