Cone 1 Alaska 0

Cone: I made neckties famous!

In what was billed as the "Battle of Triangles, loyalty and everything moral in the basketball world," the B-Meg Derby Ace Llamados under new head coach Tim Cone won over his old team of 22 years, the Alaska Aces, 81-75.

What's funny is, people would quickly dismiss it as a game of "who preaches/ practices the better triangle?" and  would argue in favor of Cone since he was yesterday's victor.

Now I'm not an expert on the triangle offense and will leave that to the more educated/ informed, but of the two teams, it was Alaska who was running the triangle while B-Meg ran parts of it before going on to a more basic, "drive and kick" game.

Seriously now, you didn't expect Cone to ask his Llamados to run what little they understood of the Triangle against a team that he pretty much bred to eat, sleep and breathe the damn thing now do you? In my mind, that's how the Aces' broke away from the Llamados early-- with their offense spread out and the players being able to anticipate or read what Cone's boys wanted to do on the hardcourt.

The Aces would've been up by a larger margin than what the box score suggests had they moved the ball more often instead of dumping it into JayR Reyes (who, to his credit, was on fire early in the game and was muscling his way inside over B-Meg's famed "Sampayan Brigade"). That, plus James Yap decided to relive his Escalante High School days and flat out owned defensive ace Tony de la Cruz in the 2nd quarter.

Come 2nd half, Cone made his adjustments while his counterpart and former assistant Joel Banal opted to stick to his guns which sealed the game.

First, Cone went exclusively to Kerby Raymudo (who's still finding his rhythm on the floor after sitting out majority of last season) and Joe DeVance. This negated the Aces' size advantage since JDV has enough bulk to keep the Aces' Sonny Thoss and Reyes (who are not exactly dominant bigs in the mold of Eric Menk or Dennis Espino-- not yet anyway) at bay while forcing them to guard him from outside. While Raymundo, injuries and all, still has the best post-offense/defense IQ of his frontline teammates not named John Ferriols (who would give up considerable height to the Aces' twin towers).

Second, Josh "The Fireball" Urbiztondo was sent in instead of Roger Yap BUT was asked to play shooting guard while PJ Simon (who's slowly becoming B-Meg's Ace and has obviously won Cone's trust) handled the PG chores. While this could be considered as a gamble on Cone's part owing to Urbiztondo's one-dimensional play (streak shooter), it gave him more options on the floor. Simon has always had great handles, so him sliding over to PG wasn't that hard (considering that Tenorio is not a Class A defender at the point position). Plus, the Triangle has almost always done away with traditional PG in favor of just about anyone who can bring the ball down (Ron Harper with Bulls/ Lakers).

Finally, the Llamados veered away from the triangle and went with a spread out offensive set that blew the game wide open (thanks to threes from Simon and Urbiztondo). How wide open were the Llamados you ask? They ran the same play THRICE, loading up on the left side of the floor and duping the Aces, only to quickly reverse it to the right wing where Urbiztondo could have waved hi to the fans, blew kisses to Mang Tom before going up for a three.

Of course, there's still Kerby Raymundo' game-winning drive to the hoop that sealed it for the Llamados but even that was built from the same play. The Llamados loaded up on the left side, but since the Aces didn't want to risk getting burned from deep by Urbiztondo (who was stationed at the right wing yet again), they chose not to rotate and well, Raymundo found himself with a free pass to the hoop. A couple of missed shots by the Aces here and there, and that's it. Game over.

If you ask me, Banal failed to recognize what was going on in the final minutes and still stuck to whatever worked for him earlier while Cone threw out the Triangle playbook and coached the game as it unraveled before him.

That my friends, is what separated being good from being great.