Jayson Castro all heart in TNT win over Rain or Shine

Castro: all heart, all the time

Fans in faraway Cagayan de Oro were treated to an instant classic this evening with league leading Talk 'n' Text taking on closest rival (standings-wise) Rain or Shine. All eyes were on the Texters, given their growing list of injured personnel and if they could hold off the rising Elasto Painters.

The game was pretty much TNT's in the first quarter behind the all around smarts of guys like Jayson Castro, Larry Fonacier and Japeth Aguilar. RoS started out rather sluggishly, with rookie point guard Paul Lee missing a bunch of drives to the hoop and Gabe Norwood sitting out the opening (which is starting to be a norm in RoS' head coach Yeng Guiao's unpredictable rotation).

Once RoS' second unit came in behind Norwood, Ronjay Buenafe and Beau Belga, the points started to pile up and the Texters' found themselves scrambling to put a healthy rotation on the floor that's familiar to one another. Truth be told, little used guys like Sean Weinstein, Bam Gamalinda and Gilbert Lao were all dusted off by TNT coach Chot Reyes in order to spell what's left of his star team.

In the third, RoS threatened to break away behind the double-double exploits of Jervy Cruz (who had a UST flashback) and timely baskets by Beau Belga. On the other side of the floor going into the fourth, Ranidel de Ocampo had his game face on and was scoring buckets per minute-- from threes, fadeaways to post-ups, RDO was a beast.

Alas, RDO was hit with cramps midway into the fourth but still tried to play it only to be pulled out for good. This forced Reyes to go to the only "star" left standing, Jayson Castro and ask that "The Blur" lead them to their 8th victory in nine games. The game was pretty close from there on, with TNT and RoS exchanging clutch basket after clutch basket via the usual suspects: Castro for TNT and Lee and Belga for RoS.

The game went into overtime thanks to Jeff Chan's miraculous off-the-backboard triple, but once there, Castro simply took over-- limping (owing to a late quarter drive) and all. If there's anything to be said about "The Blur" it's that he is arguably, pound for pound, the best slasher in the league today. He went hard to the rim several times and owing to his speed, athleticism and upper body strength, scored every single time (much to the dismay of taller defender Norwood who kept giving Castro the right side to drive into).

Can TNT continue their winning ways into the second phase of the Philippine Cup? With RDO back in the fold, I'd have to give them a slight edge over other hopefuls. But as it stands, either Castro gets healthy quick (having a big heart and balls the size of grapefruits can only do so much) OR coach Chot is able to squeeze out consistent performances from Weinstein (who actually showed flashes of being a solid guard back with Meralco last season) and Jarred Dillinger (who was missing in today's game and was content with playing in the shadows of his other teammates).

Hopefully for the TNT faithful, Ryan Reyes comes back from his MCL injury just in time for the Finals and that the other guys step up. And by other guys, this writer is looking at you Japeth "jump shot" Aguilar. I could've sworn that Belga was once again schooling Aguilar in several plays much like Juan Manuel Marquez has Manny Pacquiao's number (but we'll get to that some other time).