Blue Eagles misfire, lose confidence in defeat to Tamaraws

Photo by Tristan Tamayo/INQUIRER.net

Ateneo rarely saw its shots fall against Far Eastern University in their Final Four of the UAAP Season 80 men’s basketball tournament.

What did go down was, as head coach Tab Baldwin said, the team’s collective confidence.

“I think our confidence kind of went down,” said Baldwin after a 80-67 loss to the Tamaraws Sunday at Smart Araneta Coliseum.

“I hate to see that because with young kids you don’t ever want to see their confidence erode a little bit.”

Ateneo shot 26-of-71 from the field good for 37 percent and nearly half of those attempts were 3-pointers.

The Blue Eagles chucked up 32 attempts from long distance and made just 10, but what made things difficult for the top seed were missing open shots.

“Can’t really tell you how, we just shot the ball badly,” said Baldwin, whose team went 3-of-10 in uncontested shots. “I thought we executed well in the first half.”

And as Ateneo failed to find the bottom of the net on a consistent basis, the Tamaraws had a field day.

FEU shot 31-of-63 from the field for 49 percentand converted 8-of-19 from deep.

The Tamaraws also went 28-of-60, 47 percent, on their contested shots.

“The big issue was our defense, FEU’s confidence was really great,” said Baldwin. “Almost all of their shots were contested and I don’t think our contests had any sort of vigor to them.”

“Our defense seemed to lack the last 10 percent of effort that it needs to have an impact on a good offensive team and tonight FEU was a good offensive team.