AdMU Blue Eagles head coach Tab Baldwin. | Photo from Smart Sports
CEBU CITY, Philippines— Aiming to reclaim the UAAP men’s basketball title, the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) Blue Eagles have been training rigidly for the past week in Tel Aviv, Israel to prepare for the upcoming UAAP Season 85.
The Blue Eagles led by head coach Tab Baldwin isn’t just having tune-up matches with Israeli basketball team, but they are rather building the team from scratch.
“We only have a couple of games. We are going there to flesh out our system even more. We need more offensive attacks and defensive sophistication,” said Baldwin.
It can be recalled that the Blue Eagles snapped their three-peat championship run after losing to the University of the Philippines (UP) Fighting Maroons in the previous UAAP season, which also marked the end of the latter’s 36-year title drought.
This time, Ateneo beefed up its preparation by taking in two Division 2 Israeli teams in Ramat HaSharon and the Elitzur Eito Ashkelon.
The first game is up against Ramat HaSharon on the latter’s home floor on Saturday, September 3 at 9 p.m. (Manila time). Two days later or on Monday, they will face Elitzur Eito Ashkelon at the Zysman Arena at 9 p.m.
Both games will air live on SMART Sports’ Facebook page.
Before their Israel stint, the Blue Eagles played four games, three of which were the World University Basketball Series in Tokyo, and the tune-up against East Asia Super League squad Bay Area.
Their ultimate goal in Israel according to Baldwin is to become even better.
“Just got to get a lot better. We have had such a disruptive buildup in June and July because of injuries. Ange [Kouame] just came back, Dave [Ildefonso] has only been back a couple of weeks. Same with Matthew Daves,” the decorated head coach said.
“We don’t have settled rosters and combinations that are used to working together. We have to get better and time is running.”
Once they come back, Baldwin looks to rev up the team’s preparations.
“When we come back, we expect to play a lot of games,” Baldwin concluded. / with PR
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