Bulldogs seek Final Four bonus; Tigers, Eagles in crucial tiff
The race to the top—and get out of the bottom—of the Final Four of UAAP Season 88 men’s basketball tournament reaches its crucial stages starting on Saturday, when National U guns for a twice-to-beat bonus and two other proud programs battle each other just to get there.
National U battles winless University of the East at 1:30 p.m. at the Smart Araneta Coliseum, looking to seal a semifinal bonus, even as University of Santo Tomas and Ateneo slug it out in the 4:30 p.m. contest that would give the winner the inside track for the No. 4 slot.
And Ateneo coach Tab Baldwin, who practically conceded No. 1 ranking to the Bulldogs, knows the importance of this one.
“Well, I don’t think anybody should be sitting there feeling really confident. Maybe NU, you know, they’re in a good position right now,” Baldwin said. “But the pack is tight and talented. You just can’t, you know, go to sleep on them. I don’t feel confident.”
As things stand, the Growling Tigers are just half a game ahead of the Eagles at No. 4 with a 6-5 card, and, as evidenced by how things went the first time they met this season—when Santo Tomas needed three overtimes to pull out a 98-89 win—everything is still up in the air.
Well, like Baldwin said, unless you’re National U.
The Bulldogs lead the pack with a 10-2 record, with defending champion University of the Philippines the only one with a chance to unseat NU at No. 1 with an 8-3 mark as the Fighting Maroons head into their last three games.
Idle Adamson is still in the fight with a 5-6 mark and three games left.
“We’re in with a fight, you know,” Baldwin said. “And I think that’s the first thing. You gotta punch your ticket to get there by being in the fight. That’s all I can really ask for.”
The Tigers are also in for a whale of a fight, not only against the Blue Eagles, but for the rest of the season as they try to end their season the way they started it.
But the Santo Tomas coaching staff is not looking too far ahead.
“Our destiny rests in our hands,” assistant coach Japs Cuan said in Filipino. “Our mindset remains to be taking everything one game at a time. But we have to win all those games.”
“The league this year is crazy—and a lot of fun,” Baldwin added. Every game day now, I think [the] standings are going to swing around back and forth. So that’s why I think nobody can really be comfortable right now.
“You gotta show up every game and play it like it’s a playoff game now,” he added.
