By NIKOLE JAVIER
Ateneo head coach Tab Baldwin is now intently putting pressure on the Blue Eagles to pick up the slack after team’s worst start to the season in all his eight-year tenure.
Right before the season began, the American-Kiwi mentor said that leading Ateneo back to the top which he had accomplished four times prior could mean he might still be the right man for the job.
At 0-3 which is anything but usual for someone with Baldwin’s caliber, the Blue Eagles may be hitting the panic button soon if they fail to uncover some promising surprise after their gloomy start in the next game against Adamson on Saturday which will be plenty of time to put up a solid game plan and recalibrate from the grueling opening week.
“So what do we do going from here? You can’t condition people. That takes time. So we have to really put the pressure on them to make that choice in the moment to focus on that, treated as a very important job. You’ll get some success in some way,” Baldwin said.
“We just got to get the win-loss record on the rails now. It was a pretty brutal start to the season, the schedule we had, but that’s the way it is. You’ve got to play them sometime. So it just doesn’t look very good right now, it’s awful at 0-3, but you know we just believe that now we’ve got that stretch of the schedule out of the way we’ve got a week to prepare for Adamson, so we have to do a really good job because Adamson showed off what they’re capable of,” he added.
Ateneo managed at the very least to keep defending champion La Salle at sniffing distance at the break, 40-44, before crumbling in the third quarter where it only accounted for four points while the Green Archers clamped down on them to establish a convincing get away.
The numbers barely showed the Blue Eagles’ determined effort in the last three minutes of the match as they came back from 20 points down to a 74-61 final count which was something Baldwin was proud of — knowing that the uphill had only gotten steeper and a whole lot harder than they could solve at the moment.
“We fell in love a little bit with the three-point shot, and the shots aren’t falling, you know, and missed free throws again in the third quarter. So, you know, you have dry, empty possessions. dry possessions, and they kind of build up, and then you see the lead all of a sudden. It’s 10, it’s 12, and the young team starts to, you know, try to figure things out on their own. It just kind of goes from bad to worse. That’s why I took two timeouts, which I never do, ever,” said Baldwin, who took time to come out of the dug out with the rest of the coaching staff after another loss.
“But I was proud of the guys that they rallied on the fourth and didn’t let it get away to something embarrassing. In spite of the effort, sometimes you just get judged on the score. You were able to get back from 20, and you get where it was in the end, in competitive possessions. That’s what we want. So there’s positives to take away from this. And we go from there,” he added.
With co-captain and expected top scoring option Chris Koon still out due to a left ankle injury he sustained at Ateneo’s very opening game against UP, Baldwin has one less reliable leader to lean on as the squad figures out a way to keep its bid alive in the early goings of the tournament.
“You have to be patient with the process. You invest too much time into something you know will pay dividends and just don’t know when it will pay dividends,” he said.
“I think the biggest change we’ll see this week is we should get Chris back. Hopefully earlier in the week rather than later. He’s still got some soreness, but he’s responded well. He’s got stability in the ankle. that extra body, that extra veteran minutes will pay dividends for us.”
