Power shifts mark new UAAP season

THE SUMMER collegiate leagues revealed a clear power shift that will make the coming UAAP basketball and volleyball leagues intriguing to school supporters and fans of the college game.

National University’s triumph in the Filoil Flying V Hanes Pre-Season tournament is a signal that the top echelon of the UAAP will be shaken up.

The Bulldogs finished fifth last season but with a full year of playing together, a higher degree of cohesiveness has marked their game.

Amiable head coach Eric Altamirano has often downplayed the improvement of his squad but with wins over Ateneo and La Salle in the pre-season there is reason to anticipate that NU will compete for a slot in the Final Four.

Ateneo remains a strong contender for a fifth straight title but will encounter stiff challenges from NU, Far Eastern University, and a La Salle team that is undergoing rebuilding under Gee Abanilla.

The Blue Eagles could be motivated enough to snare a fifth UAAP crown for outgoing head coach Norman Black.

The other teams, nevertheless, are just as hungry to end Ateneo’s reign and begin their own strings of UAAP titles.

In women’s volleyball, Ateneo took the Shakey’s V-League title in a nail-biter finale against UST. Ateneo’s climb into the upper power bracket of the UAAP was over a four-year period with the harnessing of the talents of Gem Ferrer, Gzi Gervacio, Gretchen Ho and Fille Cainglet.

It remains to be seen if this core and its supporting cast learned enough lessons from its loss to powerhouse La Salle in the finals last year.

The Green Spikers have opted not to play in the V-League for a number of seasons so there is no way to determine their strength for the upcoming title defense. It can be expected, though, that La Salle will remain the team to beat.

University of Santo Tomas will need a cohesive lineup on the floor now that there will be no more guest players in the UAAP tournament. Adamson and FEU, the other regular members of the UAAP volleyball elite, are still looking for reliable lineups that can carry them deep into the season.

The Lady Falcons and Lady Tamaraws have not found the key players who will be reliable scorers and leaders.

Like all team sports, volleyball success is reliant on cohesiveness and alert teamwork, but you still need great players to win championships.

The pre-season is a good barometer to see what kind of team a coach will have for the UAAP. But the context changes once there are larger crowds, a heightened interest by the school communities kicks in and the media takes a sharper and more critical look at performances.

Coaching and team management will really matter too for the varsity players who are always asked to play older than their young years because school pride is at stake.

The tournament format—where only the top four teams march into the semifinals—also makes all games important. The key is not to be hit by early losses or surprise upsets by the lower seeded teams along the way.

That’s where coaches hope that the experience of playing together in real tournament games during the summer will toughen up squads for the pressure of the UAAP wars.