ONE more year?
Ateneo fans can hold their hopes up at least for one more season.
Coach Tab Baldwin allayed fears of the Katipunan faithful and assured that he’s still in the saddle for the Blue Eagles come the UAAP Season 88 men’s basketball tournament.
“My decision is yes,” he said as Ateneo concluded its UAAP Season 87 campaign with a 69-55 loss to Adamson to end up with a measly four win total in 14 games.
It’s really not the kind of campaign Baldwin expected, with the Blue Eagles exiting the Final Four for the second straight season.
Not helping has been the chatter of his potential return back to New Zealand, a rumor that has hounded him from the season’s start.
Yet the American-Kiwi coach said that his contract will end at the conclusion of next year’s campaign – that he can guarantee.
“I’m not the ultimate decision maker. If you want to get more confirmation, you have to talk to other people who would be involved in that decision. But my goal, my decision, my earnestness is to coach the Blue Eagles next year,” he said.
READ: Adamson stays alive, sets up UAAP fourth seed playoff vs UE
For now, Baldwin’s focus is to whip Ateneo back to its old, deadly shape especially with the disappointing season that was.
“When you come off of a dip in performance, whether you’re an individual athlete or a player in a team or a coach, if you’re a competitor, you can’t wait to get the gloves on again and do the work,” he said.
“I don’t care who wins it this year, I just care about how we play in our first game next year and there’s a hell of a lot to be done before we get there. That’s all I’m thinking about,” he added.
Indeed, foundations were built this year with the promising campaigns from bluechip rookies Jared Bahay and Kristian Porter to solid sophomores Andrew Bongo and Shawn Tuano.
Yet ever the perfectionist, Baldwin knows that it’s not enough.
“There have to be improved performances, improved trainings, and greater commitments from these players and the players that will join us,” he said.
“Success in the UAAP is not easy and it hasn’t gotten any easier. Programs like UP and La Salle have significantly lifted the standards and they’re not gonna give up the ground they’ve gained very easily and nor should they. Getting your hands dirty and getting in and being prepared to take some gut shots and some real punches to the face is exactly what we expect and we can’t wait to feel that pain and deliver some punches of our own.”
What Ateneo fans can anticipate though, is a bigger fightback.
From the current holdovers, returning players like Lebron Nieto, in-waiting recruits in Kymani Ladi, and the next set of future Blue Eagles, Baldwin is dead set in his desire to bring the school back to the pinnacle of the UAAP.
“We are motivated. We believe that the roster this year has some positional deficiencies and we’re out to fix those. It’s good to be competitive to be a Blue Eagle next year for the current players and for the players we bring in. If they’re not up for that, but I think they will be, but for whatever reason they’re not, then it might be time to be thinking what else they might do,” he said.
“We can’t put a lot of value in this uniform if there isn’t a fight to put it on. Before there could be a ‘One Big Fight’ on the court, there should be a one bigger fight to get into that uniform.
And this year, frankly, there wasn’t enough because of the departures we had in the offseason, because of the surprise circumstances that we’ve had with Mason [Amos] transferring and Lebron getting injured in the 11th hour, guys were thrust into circumstances that maybe they did not have anticipated,” he added.
“That doesn’t help strengthen the whole setup so we got to have a more competitive team next year and I expect it will be. So it’s gonna be competitive as it should be.”
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