CHICAGO - The ongoing Season 88 of the UAAP men's basketball tournament has had some noteworthy revelations thus far.
Foremost of which is the emergence of Jeff Napa as a star coach who brought his upbringing of hardwork and discipline to NU where he turned the Bulldogs into a heavyweight program.
With a mix of blue collar ethos and clipboard brilliance, Napa engineered his team's ascent to the No. 1 seed with an 11-3 won-lost record.
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Wounded, its title hopes impaired with the loss of Quentin Millora-Brown, JD Cagulangan and LeBron Lopez, UP is still a beast, proving yet again that the Fighting Maroons' assembly line of talent has unlimited supply.
Then there's UST.
With their mettle doubted following a four-game losing streak, the Growling Tigers have since shown enough bite to get their paws at the title.
All of the above storylines continue to make the UAAP the best collegiate basketball league in the Philippines in terms of popularity and profitability.
RIVALRY RENEWED.
And while headlines and narratives often change, one plot sticks and gets better every year.
The Ateneo versus La Salle rivalry.
It's a ritual as old as time, steeped in tradition and immortalized by shared hatred.
And in this familiar dance of death the stakes are at its highest.
A La Salle win equals an outright entry to the Final Four. A loss gives Ateneo a shot at the semis, a path that will require a KO game down the road.
And coach Tab Baldwin is bracing for the perils that lays ahead.
"Our win over a very tough Adamson team gave us a boost in confidence. We have a belief that we can meet the challenge against a very talented La Salle crew." the Ateneo coach told me in a telephone interview on Monday night.
DULLING MIKE'S MAGIC.
Conquering the Green Archers would require beating them in different facets of the game but Baldwin highlights a specific point of emphasis.
Mike Phillips.
"He has the motor and motivation to hurt us in so many different ways," coach Tab said of the athletic, bruising MVP candidate. Now in his final year at Taft, Phillips is averaging 12.7 points, 14.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.3 steals in 13 starts.
"If we can limit the damage he can inflict and somehow contain their other experienced guys such as Jacob Cortez and Vhoris Marasigan, we will have a pretty good chance."
But the main key is for Ateneo's offense to show up.
Hounded by inconsistency, canning just 36.6 percent of his shots while averaging a modest 14,3 points, Kymani Ladi needs to step up.
So does Jared Bahay and Divine Adili and Dom Escobar and the entire Blue Eagles nest.
The Ateneo-La Salle duel on Wednesday is shaping up to be another epic battle, a collision that may need room in the UAAP's instant classic archives.,
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