Ateneo de Manila University head coach Tab Baldwin refused to look at the Blue Eagles’ unceremonious surrender of their reign as a complete defeat.
Instead, he sees it as a spark to ignite the flame for the rise of the new era of Ateneo basketball come Season 87 of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines men’s basketball.
Despite all the adversities the Blue Eagles encountered in Season 86, the men in blue and white still managed to get into their ninth straight postseason appearance.
However, the rebuilding Ateneo squad came up short of making it to the finals seventh in a row after receiving the boot from rival University of the Philippines, 46-57, in the UAAP Season 86 Final Four last Saturday at the Smart Araneta Coliseum.
“There’s a lot of emotion in the dugout, there’s a lot of very downcast players, they’re hurt. And they’re really feeling the pain. And you don’t feel that if you haven’t invested,” Baldwin said after missing the championship round for the first time since he took the coaching reins in 2016. “And they have invested in it because of that investment in blood and sweat. Now, there are tears because they didn’t get what they wanted out of it. And I think that we talked exactly in the terminology, you asked this question about a fire, this has to be a spark for them, which lights a fire, which burns all of us until we put it out with some hardware in the future.”
Ateneo’s journey had been anything but easy.
Losing the core of its championship roster last season with the departure of center Ange Kouame, Dave Ildefonso, BJ Andrade and Forthsky Padrigao, the Blue Eagles fielded a team with just a handful of seasoned players.
Chris Koon, Kai Ballungay and Sean Quitevis became leaders with Mason Amos, Jared Brown and one-and-done foreign student-athlete Joseph Obasa filling some of the vacated key positions.
The Blue Eagles blew hot and cold the whole elimination round to finish with a 7-7 win-loss record, tying its worst slate in 10 years. The final half of the elims was particularly brutal as Ateneo dropped three straight games to start the round before eventually winding up tied with Adamson University which forced a playoff for the last semis spot for the right to face twice-to-beat UP.
Ateneo survived the sudden death to get into the semis only to get knocked out by the same team it beat in the finals last season.
“We will be reminding one another in the months to come about the pain that we have so that the fire doesn’t go out,” Baldwin said.
