PASAY CITY, PHILIPPINES – After their early season look at Philippine teams in their first EASL meetings, international coaches Garrett Kelly and Song Young-Jin had some nice things to say about the home teams’ basketball and the quality of their recruited foreign players.

Song and the Suwon KT Sonicboom of Korea were impressive in their first win after beating Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Commissioner’s Cup champions San Miguel Beermen while Kelly and the Macau Black Bears were stunned by the PBA Philippine Cup titlists Meralco Bolts. Although their teams had contrasting results, both Song and Kelly were impressed.

“Obviously, the [Philippines] is known for its great fan base of basketball, and it got the team [San Miguel] going by feeding off their energy,” Song said through a translator. “We got over it and got the win today so it’s good, but before we got here we watched a lot of films. They [SMB] are very skilled and they got a lot of shooters, so we prepared a lot before we came here.”

Despite the loss, the Beermen’s American reinforcement EJ Anosike balled out with 34 points, which Song acknowledged with the Sonicboom having a hard time containing him.

“He [Anosike] got us in a tough situation [scoring all those points], so we had to put another man on him in the second half,” Song added.

For Kelly and Macau, Meralco’s American import Allen Durham was the one that gave them the most problems after being a force in the paint all game long. Durham had 17 points, 11 rebounds, and 4 assists in a double-double effort as the Bolts took a 12-point win over the much bigger Black Bears team.

“Allen Durham is – he’s a bully,” recalled Kelly in the post-game press conference. “The guy is built like one of the Ninja Turtles. You can’t get around him. He puts his shoulder on you, he’s gonna score – on his right or left hand. He also made his jump shots tonight – I know he can make them – but we kind of gambled on that. We said let’s just live with those [Durham’s jump shots] and try to box them out and get the rebounds. But that whole group [Meralco], as a whole, has been together for a while now.”

Kelly further lauded the Bolts’ chemistry and their familiarity with each other that led to their win as the PH team had every answer to the Black Bears’ defensive scheme.

“That group – you can tell. They got into new situations where we zoned them, and they reacted. We ran them, we pressed them, we ran some different sets, we had some different things, and we moved around – and they just responded and just kept moving. They’re a well-conditioned team, a well-coached team, well-run organization by everything I can see – they’re just really sharp,” Kelly said.