By Rey Joble

FOR the fourth straight conference, the championship series in the Philippine Basketball Association is going the extra mile?another Game 7 encounter.

Talk N Text found a way to survive after a morale-boosting 99-94 victory Sunday night in the KFC-PBA Philippine Cup at the jam-packed Araneta Coliseum.

Mac Cardona scored four points inside the final two-minute mark and Ali Peek delivered the final blow with a short jumper, 98-94, that extended the game to a deciding seventh game.

The Tropang Texters, behind Harvey Carey and Jimmy Alapag, posted their first sizeable lead of 45-37, with 4:59 left in the second period.

They came out fully loaded in the third period as the team?s top guns?Alapag and Cardona?joined forces. A Carey basket inside gave Talk N Text its biggest lead of the game, 78-59.

Game 6 drew an almost sold-out Sunday crowd at the Big Dome in anticipation of an Alaska victory.

Among those included in the crowd was cage great Robert Jaworski, who once became bigger than the game itself when he was still player-coach of Ginebra San Miguel. He is not associated to any team right now, but his presence added color to an already interesting series, stirring the curiosity of basketball experts and media men.

?I?m here just to enjoy the game,? said Jaworski, who was once rumored to handle the Talk N Text team before management opted to get Chot Reyes.

?This is a great game. The game didn?t diminish in terms of prestige, although there were a lot of changes happening in the game now,? added Jaworski.

Meanwhile, Rain or Shine survived a gritty Smart Gilas Pilipinas squad, 84-81, in the exhibition match earlier.

Jay-R Reyes scored his team?s last five points, but the Dragons had to buck a last-second three-point attempt by RP Team guard JV Casio to win.

Casio missed a potential game-tying triple, which could have given the Nationals yet another deadlock in their two-game exhibition series against PBA teams. The Smart Gilas team salvaged a 95-all outcome against Burger King last time around.