Snowbird Sando Bags and Wishcraft arranged a Friday night showdown by knocking out their respective opponents in Tuesday night’s Grace Alumni Basketball League (GABL) wildcard action at Pace Academy in Quezon City.

No. 6 seed Snowbird, who seems to enjoy being tagged as underdogs, started the night by showing their mastery over No. 3 seed Kanzai Auto Supply 89-79.

As the lowest seeded team in the wildcard round, Snowbird of playing Coach Jason Ang played without pressure and took the game slowly but surely despite trailing by 6 after the 1st, 13 at half and 10 before the start of the 4th quarter.

The short handed Coach Ang, an Architect by profession and part owner of AngLo Partners and Architects (AngLo), practically used a 6-man rotation the whole game as the 7th man fielded in saw limited minutes.

Snowbird, made mostly of Grace Christian Church members and has a 4-1 win-loss record on Sunday games, showed that they can also win on non Sunday games.

Bryan Bernabe’s 24 points led the way for Snowbird while Chino Guasa and Michael Guiao combined for 36 points, but it was Dayle Ng, a consistent member of the Defensive team, that made a big difference for Snowbird. Ng had a brilliant all around game of 16 points, 9 rebounds, 5 blocks and 3 steals.

It was the second time that Snowbird came from behind to snatch a win from Kanzai. On their Feb 22 quarterfinals meeting, they trailed 46-26 at the start of 4th quarter, but managed to outscore their opponent 27-5 in the pay off period to pull off a 53-51 win. This time, the sando bag makers outscored the car specialist 32-12 in the last quarter to march to their first final 4 appearance.

Glendon Co paced Kanzai with 20 points while the See brothers Jet and Tristan combined for 24 points.

In the second game, defending Champion Wishcraft leaned on their little big man Jonathan Yu and prodigal son Jerome Siongloo to repulse Gerry’s Grill 91-81 and kept their chance of defending their title alive.

Wishcraft struggled in their first 6 games with a 2-4 win-loss record but struck up 5 straight wins to arrange a Friday night showdown with Snowbird.

Yu led Wishcraft with a game-high 24 points, 12 of them coming from the charity stripe and Siongloo had 15 points, making 4 of 7 from the three point area.

The usually reliable Andy Nelson Tan was visibly bothered by the presence of the bigger Daryl Tan, struggled on the floor making only 1 point in the 1st three quarters. But exploded when it matters most, scoring 7 of their team’s last 15 points to end up with a 8 point, 14 rebound production.

Gilbert Go and Ace Balagtas paced the Grillers with 18 and 17 points respectively.

Gerry’s Grill team owner Christian Cheng actually started the game on fire making 4 straight shot from the rainbow area and also added 3 charity points in the 2nd quarter to finish the half with 15 points, but was not fielded in that much in the 2nd half.