Huge fourth quarter from Alas tows NLEX to victory.
Saturday night saw an intense, exciting back-and-forth between two teams atop the PBA Governors’ Cup standings: the NLEX Road Warriors and the Converge FiberXers.
The Road Warriors came out on top of that hard-fought battle, thanks in part to the all-out effort of coach Frankie Lim’s wards—everyone of them. Actually, both teams went all out, with Converge looking to keep pace with the San Miguel Beermen and the TNT Tropang Giga and NLEX trying to stay in the top four.
Only one team had an ace, though, and that was NLEX. That ace is Kevin Alas.
Slowed down by consecutive ACL injuries in the previous years, the former Letran Knight is playing arguably the best basketball of his life. And on Saturday night against the FiberXers, he showed he can take over a game for the Road Warriors, dropping 18 of his 31 points in the fourth quarter as NLEX outlasted a very game, very well-coached Converge squad.
Lim may have perfectly summarized how NLEX overcame Converge:
“Ibang level of effort ‘yung pinakita nila [Road Warriors], and buti na lang mayroon kaming Kevin Alas.”
Lim was spot-on in his assessment. With the Road Warriors down 100-107 with under 5 minutes remaining, Alas engineered NLEX’s fiery 16-5 windup, making all the big plays and all the big shots. He scored on a three-point play to edge NLEX closer, 105-107, and drove for another lay-in to keep the Road Warriors in lockstep with the FiberXers, 107-109.
Alas was also front and center in arguably the most crucial sequence of that nip-and-tuck endgame, getting a steal and then converting a booming triple to give NLEX a 113-109 lead—one it never relinquished.
It was truly an ace of a performance. And it came from someone evolving into an ace of a player.