‘Basketball takes backseat’ as Ateneo players ready for final exams

Ateneo coach Tab Baldwin. Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

As much as coach Tab Baldwin would love to have the full attention of his Ateneo squad, he knows that his players are also preoccupied with their academics.

That’s why Baldwin is giving his players much time to focus on their studies as the Blue Eagles brace for their final examinations this week.

“This is a very important time of the calendar academically. We try to squeeze these games in and it’s not something we do normally. We’ve got half our minds on finals coming up and everybody’s knows in Ateneo, it’s a critical time for us,” he said.

“After May 10, it’s all about academics. We won’t touch the players, we won’t have any practices. Basketball right now is taking a backseat to education and sometimes that’s a good thing.”

It’s also the reason why the Kiwi-American mentor isn’t batting an eyelash after Ateneo’s 90-89 stunning defeat to Lyceum at the start of the 2017 Filoil Flying V Preseason Premier Cup on Monday.

“That’s what we play these games for, to find out what we need to focus on our practices, where we need to focus our attention to our systems,” he said. “In all honesty, we haven’t been working on our systems. We’ve been doing a lot of individual work on our players.”

“Obviously, you can look at our players and you can see physically we’ve gotten a lot stronger – that’s been much of our primary focus, and a lot individual skill work. We’ve left a lot of skill stuff until just recently. We will morph into that. But our goal is September until December and that’s what we’re trying to get ready for.”