Ateneo program good for a 5th straight crown

By Al S. Mendoza

WHEN a team can afford to release its top gun amid an impending war for the crown, it is almost cocksure of victory.

That was Ateneo in the just-ended UAAP basketball tournament, when it beat FEU, 2-0, in the best of three title playoffs.

Ryan Buenafe was Ateneo’s No. 1 player in 2010.  As proof, Buenafe won last year’s MVP (Most Valuable Player) honors after powering the Blue Eagles to a third straight UAAP championship ride.

Buenafe was still good for another year, maybe two more, with Ateneo.

But because he had failing grades in school, he lost his formidable slot on the Eagle bench.

“At Ateneo, our battle cry is ‘Student first, athlete second,’” said Arben Santos.  “You don’t persevere in your studies, you are out of the team.”

Santos is an Ateneo alumnus who, together with Ricky Palou, Chot Reyes and Dodo Macapagal, helped devise a program to make Ateneo a basketball power for years and years to come.

Crafted in 1998, the program was first implemented in 1999.  Ateneo finished third.

In the next 12 seasons of the UAAP, Ateneo consistently made it to the Final 4, the longest Final 4 streak for any team in the league.

Ateneo never finished lower than third from 1999 to 2011—the best record in UAAP history.

Along the way, Ateneo won five titles, including a “4-peat” from 2008 to 2011 to become the fourth team to achieve that distinction together with Far Eastern University, University of Sto. Tomas and De La Salle.

With the new program, Joel Banal coached Ateneo to the championship in 2002.

Ateneo missed a second crown when it lost to FEU in 2006 after winning Game 1.

The setback denied Norman Black his first title as coach of Ateneo.  In his debut, his Eagles finished third in 2005.

Black’s Ateneo finished third in 2007, before Black strung up his four straight crowns from 2008.

“Without the program, we would not have reached this far,” said Black.  “We owe it all to the program.”

The program focuses on players determined to earn a degree as their top priority. If they stray from this paradigm, they get kicked out.

“This is the secret but it can’t be thoroughly achieved without the teamwork of alumni and school,” said Santos, a no-nonsense football player in his Ateneo days who acknowledges MVP’s (Manny V. Pangilinan) “tremendous financial support to the program.”

Ateneo’s recruitment system is also a wonder to watch.

In its roster are 25 players, whose basketball skills are as good as the rest of the opposition.  Its Team B is home to players that can be easily elevated to Team A status.

This early, Ateneo is loudly predicted to win a fifth straight UAAP crown next year.  Even a sixth.

With the way the Eagles clawed their way to the top of the heap this year, routing almost every team it faced in a wondrous 16-1, win-loss record for the season, I see no reason why that can’t be achieved.

Accepting bets now.

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