FOR the first time in UAAP Season 87, Ateneo has won back-to-back games early in the second round.
And that is by no means familiar territory for a rebuilding Blue Eagles side that once paraded a longstanding championship dynasty.
Now that results are starting to swing Ateneo’s way, Tab Baldwin isn’t taking anything in stride.
In fact, the multi-titled mentor isn't fond of discussing wins and losses this season.
Blue Eagles' sigh of relief
In what has been the worst start to a Baldwin-led Ateneo team, putting things into perspective in terms of the kind of players they have remains his utmost priority.
Acknowledging a ‘horrendous’ first round’ is one thing for Baldwin, but the bigger picture is what counts for him the rest of the way.
“You pop the bubble every time you get a win and some of the pressure goes off, but it kind of depends on what your perspective is and what you're looking at. We're trying to achieve some things this season now,” Baldwin said.
“Nobody's going to hide the fact that it was a horrendous, difficult first round but not all of our play was horrendous and we try not to focus entirely on results. It would be exploiting the moment if I said that getting a result all of a sudden makes everything okay. It really doesn't.
“It does take some of the pressure off. It does relieve things a bit.”
Hence, in all three wins they’ve picked up over a nine-game span, ‘celebratory’ isn’t necessarily the right term to put it all together for the Blue Eagles.
“Nobody likes to give results away, so it’s kind of a joyous occasion when we get a result. In other years, we would have been very circumspect about enjoying our results because we would have been focused on loftier goals,” the Ateneo coach said.
“This year, we don't want to get too carried away when we get a result. But these guys deserve to enjoy them. Because trust me, tomorrow in practice or Monday in practice, the focus is going to be again on maturation and evolution and development with a view to winning more games.”
Feet on the present, eyes on the future
As Baldwin has stressed time and time again throughout the year, maturation sits atop all that Ateneo looks to achieve with the young crew they have onboard.
Knowing how tedious of a process it is to build players from the ground up, Baldwin acknowledges his and the coaching staff’s role in ramping up such a long-term developmental pursuit.
“More importantly, seasoning players for whatever future they have at Ateneo, whatever future they have in basketball matters. We had such a tough start and it allowed us to be a little bit more laser focused on how these guys are growing and developing as players. And we all know that the philosophy of the Blue Eagle program is that process yields results," he said.
Baldwin furthered, “It's really consistent with what we've always taught. It's just that there's more pressure on the process externally because people want results. But we will maintain our integrity to purpose that we always try to maintain.
“And that is that these young men deserve the very best from the coaching staff to help them become professional basketball players, and in the meantime, represent our community and our university to the best of our ability.”
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