Undermanned Star hands near 30-point defeat to GlobalPort

MANILA–The Star Hotshots maintained its dominance despite t he absence of some key players to score a 103-77 rout of t he GlobalPort Batang Pier in the 2017 Oppo PBA Commissioner’s Cup on Saturday at the Mindanao Civic Center Gym in Lanao del Norte.

Reinforcement Tony Mitchell l ed the way with double- double 22 points and 17 rebounds for the Hotshots, which tied the Alaska Aces at second place in the standings with a 2- 0 win- loss slate.

Rookie Jiovani Jalalon and Peter June Simon had 15 and 10 points, respectively, while Aldrech Ramos and Justin Melton had nine points each for the Hotshots, which played without injured Jean Marc Pingris and used the hurting Paul Lee sparingly.

Trailing by as much as nine points in the opening quarter, the Hotshots leaned on consecutive points by Simon and Mitchell to tie t he count at 27- all on a conversion by Mark Barroca.

The Hotshots continued its run behind Allein Maliksi and Ian Sangalang to take a 46- 41 advantage following a triple by Paul Lee. But Terrence Romeo came up with hits for the Batang Pier to cut the deficit to 46-43 at halftime.

From a tight exchange early in the third quarter, the Hotshots went on another scoring run behind Ramos and Mitchell to build a 68-57 lead. It later grew to 78- 61 with triples by Maliksi and Mitchell.

The Batang Pier tried its best to cut the deficit in the final quarter, coming to as close as 13 points but the Hotshots responded with another rally to build a lead as high as 26 points on hits by rookie Chris Javier, Mon Abundo and Gryann Mendoza.

I mport Sean Williams finished with double- double 20 points and 14 rebounds, while Stanley Pringle and Romeo contributed 19 and 13 points f or t he Batang Pier, which slipped to the 0- 2 mark./PN