man army, Anthony Johnson led Sta. Lucia Realtors in annihilating the Coca-Cola Tigers, 94-88, Friday night to advance to the quarterfinals of the 2009 Motolite PBA Fiesta Conference. In the second match, the Purefoods TJ Giants needed two overtime periods to finally eliminate the Talk N Text Tropang Texters, 126-123. The Texters rallied from a 12-point deficit in the first overtime to force another five-minute contest. But the Giants would not be denied the victory despite the fouling out of import Marquis Chandler in the fourth quarter. Kerby Raymundo topscored with 33 points on top of 10 rebounds. The Giants now face the Rain or Shine Elasto Painters in the best-of-three quarterfinals. Rashard Bell led the Texters with 29 points. In the first match, Sta. Lucia's Johnson shot a sizzling 16-for-22 from the field enroute to a 42-point performance, including 3-for-3 from beyond the three-point arc, his second best output this conference. He also had grabbed a conference-high 24 rebounds, – his career best in the league and the second biggest number of rebounds registered by a player in one game this season, next only to the 25 Asi Taulava recorded in the last Philippine Cup. Johnson scored 10 of Sta. Lucia's last 16 points in the last five minutes of the game while handcuffing the Tigers' James Penny. The night before the game, Fernandez said Johnson told him that he wouldn't want to go home yet and “promised that he would see us in practice on Saturday.” Johnson lived up to his promise by playing extra hard for the Realtors who were still saddled by the absence of Kelly Williams, their star forward who has been diagnosed with a blood disorder and who has missed his team's last six games. Fernandez said his game plan to limit the points output of Coke's Taulava and Penny clicked. “My hats off to my players. They followed my game plan, which was to stop Asi and Penny. We concentrated our defense on the two,” he said. The Realtors held Penny to only four points in the fourth quarter although he still scored a total of 33 points – 15 of them in the second quarter. But he committed nine turnovers. Taulava chipped in 15 points but missed eight free throw attempts out of his 13 attempts. The Tigers had their chances of winning the game despite Johnson's overpowering performance. They even enjoyed a 57-50 lead in the third quarter. But then the Realtors unleashed an 18-6 run to take a 68-63 lead. A triple by Ronjay Buenafe kept the Tigers close at 77-78 with still 5:48 remaining in the game, but Johnson struck back with a quick layup on the next play then scored on a follow-up to stretch Sta. Lucia's lead to five points. A dunked by Penny and a layup by Taulava pulled Coke to 81-82. After a timeout, Johnson scored on an alleyhoop dunk and Ryan Reyes knocked in a huge triple to sandwhich a basket by Taulava and give the Realtors an 87-83 lead that they kept until the final buzzer. __
