Here are the live scores, updates, and results of the 2022 PBA Philippine Cup Semi-Finals Game 5 between the San Miguel Beermen and the Meralco Bolts scheduled on August 12, 2022, at 6:00 PM.
The Beermen failed to take a commanding lead in their previous outing and wanted to reclaim that series lead tonight while the Bolts are eager to prove that they’re no longer a pushover squad in the All-Filipino conference. All that will be decided after the last buzzer in tonight’s PBA action.
Related: San Miguel vs TNT Game 7 2022 PBA Philippine Cup Finals
Looks like Meralco was able to solve the June Mar Fajardo puzzle especially here in the first conference where the “Kraken” and the entire San Miguel are usually in their unbeatable form. In Game 4, head coach Norman Black made an adjustment after what he saw in Game 3.
“We saw in Game 3 that they (the Beermen) were actually leaving our bigs wide open. They have to make sure they have the confidence to take the shots when they come,” said Black.
Meralco took advantage of the defensive stance of their opponent and instructed his troops to search for their bigs and take over the game.
“Offensively, we were able to go to our bigs, our bigs had a lot of confidence tonight. They took their shots, they made their shots, Raymond especially, and that was the key,” Black added.
Game 4 was almost a similar situation to Game 2 where the Bolts made their early shocks and put San Miguel behind, 36-23 after the final buzzer. However, Marcio Lassiter found his shooting grooves in the second half to cut the deficit to a manageable lead at the end of the second half.
In the third quarter, Meralco unleashed another shocking offense where they stunned the Beermen and mount a much advantage where they controlled the game by as much as 22 points.
“Maganda ang preparasyon sa aming ng mga coaches namin. At naniwala kami na kung tulong-tulong mai-stop namin si June Mar,” said Meralco big-man Raymond Almazan.
For San Miguel, though Fajardo, Lassiter, and CJ Perez each scored at least 20 points yet their second unit went struggling. SMBs bench only contributed 20 points against Meralco’s 43. Likewise, their semis rival moved the ball much better from them as the Bolts logged 28 dimes versus 19 from them.