Shed no tears for Ateneo

Michael Angelo B. Asis

This is a bitter pill to swallow but the glorious Ateneo Blue Eagles will be wrongfully portrayed as underdogs in the Final Four. Fans will say it’s a “rebuilding year” but there are no rebuilding years for top recruiting schools, and the Katipunan-based institution has never fallen short of the talent flow.

For perspective, I’m sure schools like Adamson or University of the East would love to have a prospect like Mason Amos on their team. The Blue Eagles still had the blue chips, even if they lost Francis Lopez to University of the Philippines.

This corner has not had a shortage of Tab Baldwin praise. He is still the best basketball mentor out there but that does not mean he will never have his lapses. It is very tempting to label him as overrated, but that is not the case, since his achievements with Gilas Pilipinas and Ateneo are more than enough to make his case.

Despite the bumpy ride, Ateneo has entered the Final Four via the play-off. The Blue Eagles had a dominant do-or-die game against the Adamson Falcons, and made it the last UAAP game to Jerom Lastimosa.

Now there will be a mad rallying cry to take down the Fighting Maroons on Saturday. It will be an epic marketing frenzy of the Finals rematch, the next chapter in the now storied “Battle of Katipunan.”

And because of UP’s tournament-long dominance, it will be portrayed as a “David vs Goliath” match-up. But I think that’s way off.

Underachievers, not underdogs

Ateneo lost key players in Ange Kouame, Dave Ildefonso, and Forthsky Padrigao, but that’s part of college basketball life. All schools experience that, just to different extents at different times.

Perhaps the Eagles were not able to hit all their targets but their roster is far from weak. They are still fielding one of the tallest lineups in the league.

We have to call a spade a spade. The glaring inconsistency of Ateneo makes them underachievers, not underdogs. The league has clearly divided itself, and the two powerhouse rosters are in the top two. But UP and La Salle have quantity, not quality.

Mason Amos is clearly a more advanced talent than any of UP’s big guy recruits like Luis Pablo or Seven Gagate. They will develop, especially once Malik Diouf leaves, but right now, the frontline of Amos, Kai Balungay, and Chris Koon should be formidable enough against any UAAP team.

To be fair, Ateneo split their match-ups with the two powerhouses. But how could one explain how they lost twice to lowly Far Eastern University? FEU is the only team that this season’s cellar-dweller University of Santo Tomas Growling Tigers defeated this season. FEU has always fought hard, especially with LJ Gonzales, but they could not close out games. How could a powerhouse Ateneo team lose to the Tamaraws twice?

Bottom line

The bottom line for the Blue Eagles: they are not responsible for the breaks that went their way, and most especially that ill-fated advertisement. They had nothing to do with that, and was even an unwanted distraction.

The suspension of Precious Momowei was not their fault at all, and missed calls are a reality in basketball, as shown in another topic to be discussed.

Ateneo in the Final Four is nothing new. The Blue Eagles were never underdogs, and they could completely reverse the floundering narrative on Season 86 starting with a win on Saturday.

Suspended, so what?

The “Manila Clasico” game was marred by a glaring missed call by the referees. So the PBA responded by suspending the referees who made the egregious error. But just like the NBA’s “Last Two Minute Reports,” the damage is done, and the effects have not been rectified.

There was another suspension for the elbow to the face of rookie Kyt Jimenez, by, not surprisingly, Cliff Hodge. That was not called by the referees.

Referees are human, so the league has to find ways to correct their errors within the game and have an equitable outcome. Suspending the referees after the game does little to rectify the mistakes. There are possible solutions to that end, to be discussed in the next article.