DEFENDING champion Stream Ingenyouity and the Teletech Titans dumped their respective opponents yesterday to force a pair of sudden-death duels in the conference finals of the 2012 Sun Cellular E-League for Basketball at the City Sports Club-Cebu Gym.
Stream bashed Aegis Vipers, 62-49 to tie the best-of-three northern conference finals at 1-1. The Titans also tied the southern conference finals at one-all by dispatching the Sykes Pioneers, 59-43.
Aegis and Sykes jumped to 1-0 headstarts with the former drubbing Stream, 72-63, and the latter trouncing the Titans, 72-61, in the series-openers.
Stream and Teletech made sure there will be no coronations yesterday, bouncing back from their Game 1 debacles with huge games from the get-go until the final buzzer.
Louie Cesar Arroyo paced Stream with 12 points, reigning MVP Sylvester Millevo fired 11 points, while Michael Recla added 10. Aegis was led by Steve Warren Navaja’s 10 markers.
Stream took the fight out of Aegis when it closed the first half with a sizable 35-23 lead which still stood at 13 points after the third period as the defending champions remained relentless the rest of the way to keep their title-retention bid-alive.
Teletech, meanwhile, limited Sykes to just five points in the opening period to dictate the tempo of the crucial match.
Sherwin Emmanuelle Resilla led the Titans with a game-high 22 points and 13 rebounds. Lourenz Limpangog backed Resilla with 18 markers.
Gerald Bien Galarido was the lone double-digit scorer for Sykes with 10 points. /EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CALVIN D. CORDOVA