Ateneo head coach Tab Baldwin. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net
No coach wants his team to be on the losing end of a championship.
But Ateneo coach Tab Baldwin manned up and swallowed his side’s fate, confirming everyone’s prediction in the offseason that La Salle truly was the best team in UAAP Season 79.
“They were the best team all year long. There’s nothing I could say that’s a surprise. They earned this championship,” he said on Wednesday after the Green Archers’ 79-72 Game 2 victory over the Blue Eagles to clinch the title.
Baldwin heaped praises for Jeron Teng, who was a thorn in the side of Ateneo for the whole championship series.
“Jeron was unbelievable. He was clearly the MVP. He was the guy they went to. They recognized that their title hopes lie on his shoulders, and he delivered,” he said, after the senior winger fired 28 points and three rebounds in Game 2 en route to being named as the Finals MVP.
Baldwin was also the first one to defend the champions against the critics.
“I think a lot of people may have been saying that La Salle were much better than they were performing, and that’s exceptionally unfair. They had to fight hard to win this championship and they showed a lot of character in doing that, and they deserve all the credit for that.”
Not that the Green Archers coasted through the course of the year.
Dominating as La Salle was, it still had moments of vulnerability with Ateneo being the only one to solve that puzzle in an 83-71 win on November 5. That would prove to be the Green Archers’ lone defeat of the season as they amassed a 16-1 record for the year.
For Baldwin, he can take solace knowing that Ateneo didn’t just roll over and still gave La Salle all it could handle.
“I think what we did was to make it tough for them, and to some degree we did, but they were the better team,” he said. “I thought all of their guys did a great job and they’re an outstanding group of players.”