T

he AirAsia ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) finals are heading to a decisive game for the first time in the league’s history.

In the first and second seasons, the AirAsia Philippine Patriots and Chang Thailand Slammers respectively won the ABL title by sweeping past their opponents.

This Saturday, however, the San Miguel Beermen and the Indonesia Warriors will lay everything on the line to capture the 2012 ABL title.

The Beermen took Game 1 of the series 86-83 two weeks ago, but the Warriors defeated the Beermen 81-61 in Game 2 of the series last Saturday, forcing a Game 3. Despite the big win, the Warriors’ head coach, Todd Purves, is not expecting a walk in the park.

“I expect the game to go down to the wire. We are going to have to play our best basketball of the year to get a win,” said Purves about Game 3, which will be held at the Beermen’s homecourt, the Ynares Sports Arena in the Philippines.

The Warriors got their usual numbers from Evan Brock, who finished with 26 points and 16 rebounds, while Stanley Pringle added 13 points. Coach Purves made a conscious effort to give more minutes to his bench who responded by scoring 24 points. Jerick Canada gained nine points and Arki Dikania Wisnu chipped in seven points off the Warriors’ bench.

“We’ve made some minor adjustments, including keeping some fresh legs down the stretch. We need the full 40 minutes to beat this team because in Game 1, we played a good 35 minutes but lost the game,” said Coach Purves who has just won the ABL 2012 Coach of the Year award.

The Beermen’s head coach, Bobby Parks, believes something positive will come out from this loss.

“Sometimes when you lose by three, it’s not a wake-up call to the players, who might think ‘oh, that was close and we could still have won’. But when you get drubbed like this, by 20 points, then there’s a tendency for pride to come into play and you have to bounce back because they really beat us, we were totally out of the game,” said Parks.

The Beermen were held to 39 percent shooting and were outrebounded 37-21. The Duke Crews led the Beermen with 16 points and Leo Avenido followed with 13 points. Nick Fazekas had six early points but he was a non-factor during the rest of the game and finished with 10 points.

Coach Parks hopes his team will bounce back and play better in Game 3. “We’ve got to bounce back, we have no choice. I’ve got confidence in these guys. The most important thing is to execute and follow the game plan.”