DEFENDING champion San Miguel Beer brought down Bay Area, 98-96, in Game 3 to stay alive in their best-of-five semifinal series in the PBA Commissioner’s Cup at the PhilSports Arena.

Simon Enciso was the man of the hour for the Beermen as he nailed a three- pointer with 12 seconds left for the final count.

Bay Area had a chance to steal the win like in the series opener but import Devon Scott blocked Kobey Lam’s layup with seven seconds remaining.

Also coming through for San Miguel was the 1-2 punch of Scott and June Mar Fajardo, who combined of 46 points.

Scott had a double-double performance of 25 points on 11-of-19 shooting and 14 rebounds in 44 minutes of action while Fajardo added 21 points and 16 rebounds.

CJ Perez contributed 17 points, Enciso had 16 points and Terrence Romeo had 13 points for coach Leo Austria.

It was San Miguel’s first win over Bay Area in three outings.

“This is an indication that Bay area is beatable,” said Austria in an interview posted at the official PBA website.

“I think I talked for not more than one minute…because I’ve already written down the things that might happen in the game and I allowed them to read it for three to five minutes. I’m happy sumaksak sa isipan nila ” added Austria.

Andrew Nicholson topscored for the Bay Area with 34 points on top of 14 rebounds in 43 minutes.

Songwei Zhu added 17 points and seven rebounds for coach Brian Goorjian.

Zhu, however, left the game with an injured right foot off a bad fall with 10.8 seconds left.

The scores:

San Miguel (98) — Scott 23, Fajardo 21, Perez 17, Enciso 16, Romeo 13, Lassiter 6, Ross 0, Cruz 0, Manuel 0, Brondial 0.
Bay Area (96) — Nicholson 34, Zhu 17, Lam 12, Liu 12, Blankley 10, Ju 6, Yang 5.
Quarterscores: 24-17, 47-43, 70-75, 98-96.

The results:

Game 1 — Bay Area 103, San miguel 102.
Gamec2 — Bay Area 114, San Miguel 95.
Game 3 — San Miguel 98, Bay Area 96.
(Bay Area leads series, 2-1)

Games Wednesday;

(Mall of Asia Area)
3 p.m.– Magnolia vs Ginebra
5:45 p.m. — Bay Area vs. San Miguel