The Giga-squad was put into break after head coach Chot Reyes took over Gilas Pilipinas for the Fiba World Cup qualifiers as well as loaning some of the TNT players to Gilas.

Coach Reyes made sure that PBA and FIBA would be two different competitions and won’t hinder the players from playing in each of the competitions.

The returning Gilas players, Kelly Williams, Troy Rosario, Poy Erram, RR Pogoy, and Kib Montalbo, secured the fourth quarter and ended the game with a 13 points advantage.

“In the end we had to get Kelly back in the game for defensive purposes and because again Blackwater threatened in the last three, four minutes, I didn’t have any plans of putting him back in the game, but the most important objective was to win the game first,” said Reyes.

“The situation called that we get defenders inside and that’s why they ended up playing some minutes.”

TNT easily took control of the first quarter by stopping the Blackwater to take more shots in the last three minutes, power tripped by Ryan Reyes and two consecutive two points from Troy Rosario, 24-16.

But Blackwater tried to fight their way through to chase the deficit and tied the game score at 29 with six minutes left on the shot clock, thanks to the crucial threes of JVee Casio. Yet, that was not enough to bring TNT down as they finish the second quarter with a 49-36 score.

The third quarter was also under the palm of TNT as Williams gave a whopping 23 points to the whole game followed by Casio’s 21 points.

Blackwater appeared to get a jolt of caffeine as they were able to come close at 92-103 but still the game ended in favor of TNT.

“Everyone expects us to win and the odds are stacked in our favor. These are the games that I really dread the most. All I asked was to make sure that the other team does not outwork us. I’m glad that we started that way,” said Reyes.

The scores: 

TNT 106 – M. Williams 23, Fuller 16, Reyes 16, Pogoy 16, Rosario 8, Alejandro 6, Khobuntin 5, Montalbo 5, Castro 5, Erram 4, K. Williams 2, Banal 0

Blackwater 93 – Glover 26, Casio 21, Suerte 14, Desiderio 7, McCarthy 7, Amer 6, Paras 4, Ebona 4, Ayonayon 2, Baloria 2, Melton 0, Escoto 0, Washington 0, Chauca 0

Quarters: 24-16; 49-36; 80-65; 106-93