PBA: Three-point shooting woes led to Rain or Shine's defeat - Guiao

Rain or Shine Elasto Painters head coach Yeng Guiao rued his side's poor outside shooting performance in their 87-81 loss to the Talk 'N Text Tropang Texters, in game one of the 2012-13 PBA Finals series, essentially calling it the team's missing link. "It's important that we can connect [on] our outside shooting," Guiao, who is seeking his first Philippine Cup title, said. "The middle was just clogged, too tight for us. Di nagbalanse offense namin." [Related: Fonacier's late triple lifts TNT over Rain or Shine in Finals game one] Rain or Shine, which entered the Finals norming a 30.89 percent clip from downtown went 4-for-21 from downtown, or 19 percent. Talk 'N Text, in contrast, connected on 10-of-27, for 37 percent, up from the 33.81 percent they average. One of those 10 triples includes Larry Fonacier's huge downtown connection, which snapped a 15-2 Rain or Shine run, in the fourth quarter. "As bad as we played, I still think we had a chance to win this game in the fourth," Guiao added. "We just didn't shoot well from outside." Paul Lee, Chris Tiu, TY Tang, and Ronnie Matias accounted for Rain or Shine's triples, but more established snipers Jeff Chan, JR Quinahan, and Beau Belga combined to go 0-for-10. The Elasto Painters managed to do other things right however. Most importantly, they had a solid performance on the offensive boards, turning a 13-to-9 edge on the glass into a 12-3 advantage in second-chance points. RoS also had fewer turnovers, 14 versus 19 for TNT, and got to the stripe more, 27 times versus 22. Guiao is confident though that his side can bounce back from the loss, pointing out, "As long as we can hang around, we can grind out some wins." Their 23-16 fourth quarter output showed that there is quite a lot of truth in those words. - AMD, GMA News