Titan Ultra’s lightning would not strike twice. TNT made sure of that Saturday, August 8, unleashing a cruising 114-80 win over its first-round tormentor to get the Tropang 5G back on track in the PBA Governors’ Cup at the Ynares Center-Montalban. Even without being at full strength, the Tropa had more than enough firepower to turn the tables on the team that had beaten them just weeks earlier.

Brandon Ganuelas-Rosser and Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson led the charge with 19 points apiece, with Hollis-Jefferson adding 12 rebounds to his stat line. Jordan Heading, back from a shoulder injury that had kept him out of the last two games, topped all scorers with 23 points, while Rey Nambatac chipped in 14 points and dished out eight assists to keep the offense humming.

Defense Sparks the Turnaround

The rout avenged TNT’s 87-103 loss to the Giant Risers last July 22, when the Tropa were missing key players, and it also erased the sting of an 83-88 defeat to NLEX the previous Tuesday. Coach Chot Reyes pointed to defense as the common thread tying both outcomes together, even in the loss.

“We really made a concerted effort to focus on defense and even when we lost to NLEX I thought we played great defense except we just couldn’t put enough points on the board because we didn’t have Jordan and Roger in that game,” Reyes said. With Heading and Ganuelas-Rosser back in the fold, that defensive foundation finally had the scoring to match it.

“So thankfully tonight we had both of them in and as you saw Brandon is slowly coming into shape, Poy (Erram) gave us some quality minutes as well,” Reyes added. “So, it was a big thing that we have an ‘almost’ complete complement at our disposal today.”

Titan Ultra Sinks Further in Group A

TNT dominated the paint from start to finish, finishing plus-42 in points scored inside while out-rebounding Titan Ultra, 53-36. The Tropa also punished the Giant Risers’ turnovers, converting an 8-23 disadvantage in miscues into 31 points off those mistakes.

Tirrell Brown, who had torched Macau for 36 points in a 132-126 win just days earlier, was held to only 14 points in the loss. The defeat was Titan Ultra’s sixth in eight games, dropping the club to the bottom of Group A and putting its quarterfinal hopes in serious jeopardy. TNT, meanwhile, improved to 4-3 for third place in the group standings.