Williams carries Realtors to win over Rain or Shine

Kelly Williams carried the Sta. Lucia Realtors on his broad shoulders at crunch time, draining six of the team’s final eight points in a big 95-91 win over Rain or Shine Wednesday night at the resumption of the KFC-PBA Philippine Cup at the Araneta Coliseum. The 6-foot-6 Fil-Am showed the way for Sta. Lucia with 25 points, none of them more important than the pair of free throws and successive fade-away jumpers he made that clinched the Realtors’ ninth win in 15 games and a possible outright quarterfinals berth.

“It only says that he’s the leader of this team," said Sta. Lucia coach Boyet Fernandez of his prized player, the 2007 league Most Valuable Player (MVP). “I give him the thumbs up. He really stepped up down the stretch. Those were really crucial shots." Williams scored 15 points in the fourth quarter, went 9-for-19 from the field and 7-for-9 from the foul line while grabbing a career best-tying 19 rebounds. He came through with his heroics the moment the Realtors found themselves trailing after Jeff Chan knocked in a shot-clock beating three-pointer that gave Rain or Shine the lead for the last time at 89-87. Williams tied the count with two free throws, then connected on a looping fall-away with 1:21 left to give the Realtors the lead back at 91-89. After Sol Mercado’s pass to Jay-R Reyes resulted in a turnover, Williams once more came through with a big basket, launching an attempt that looked short, only for the ball to bounce once as it hit the rim, then trickled in as the Realtors went up, 93-89, with 56 seconds to go. Gabe Norwood then had a miss, and Ryan Reyes was deliberately fouled. Reyes hit both free throws, practically sealing the outcome with a 95-89 advantage, time down to 30.9 seconds. Norwood paced the Elasto Painters with 18 points, but not enough to prevent the team from suffering its 11th defeat with only four wins to show, still in danger of missing the playoffs. Sta. Lucia now has four games left before it concludes its 18-game elimination round campaign, needing, according to Fernandez, a sweep for a safe passage to the quarterfinals. “Ang sabi ko sa mga bata we need to sweep our last five games including this one," said Fernandez. “So Rain or Shine is out of the way. But we’ll take it one game at a time. We don’t want to be relegated to the wild card, masyadong delikado." - GMANews.TV