Ateneo jeers serve as motivation for UST, Ayo: ‘It will help us’

Aldin Ayo might have just found the spark that will light up his championship-winning fire.

University of Santo Tomas’ 85-53 loss to Ateneo in the UAAP Season 81 men’s basketball tournament was the worst of Ayo’s collegiate career but it wasn’t the losing margin that drove Ayo, but the jeers his team received from the legion of Blue Eagle fans.

Ayo said the barbs thrown at them Saturday at Filoil Flying V Centre were, safely put, not fit for printing and these same words were the ones that ignited in lifting the Growling Tigers from their 1-3 pit.

“Did you hear what the Ateneans were shouting at us?” asked Ayo when the media approached him after the game. “But those shouts will help us, it will help the program, it will help me personally, it will help the whole team.”

Ayo, who won one title apiece in the UAAP and the NCAA, always thrived when his team had a narrative and it was either being the wounded hero or the proud villain.

The muscular coach was an inspiring figure when he led Colegio de San Juan de Letran to the NCAA title against archrival San Beda using an underdog mentality to steer the Knights to their 17th championship and the first in nine years.

And he might just repeat that new narrative with UST, coincidentally a sister school of Letran in the Dominican Order.

“It will fuel our drive to strive more and make sure we’re better this time.”

And as for his new record in terms of losing margins, Ayo said he’ll take it like a man and blame himself.

“I have to take it as a man because every time you experience something like this you become sensitive but you just have to take it,” said Ayo whose first UAAP title was with De La Salle in 2016.