PH Collegiate Cage Champs: Ateneo or Letran?
By Teodoro Medina Reynoso
PhilBoxing.com
Fri, 22 Nov 2019
The mighty Ateneo de Manila Eagles as expected swept a fighting University of Santo Tomas Golden Tigers, in fact the entire field, to retain their hold of the UAAP basketball championship for the fourth straight year Wednesday at a rocking Mall of Asia arena.
This after a gritty and determined Colegio de San Juan de Letran Knights denied the bid of powerhouse San Beda University Red Lions for a threepeat to bag their first NCAA championship in years, winning their best of three series, two games to one.
So we have Ateneo and Letran emerging as the undisputed best teams of their respective leagues.
The question now is, which of these two champion squads is the country's premier collegiate team, our version of the US NCAA champion school?
How can we determine for sure?
In the recent past, the so called Philippine Collegiate Champions League tournament was held featuring the top 16 college teams coming from Metro Manila, North and South Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao playing in a single -loss -and- your -are -out knockout format to determine the country's top collegiate quintet.
But the holding of such year-ender tournament as seen in last several years, save for a couple of instances, had not conclusively crown what could be rightfully called as the Philippine collegiate champion team.
Noticeably, while the NCAA champion teams especially San Beda have always participated and taken the PCCL tournaments seriously, the same could not be said of their UAAP counterparts, chiefly Ateneo and even De La Salle during the times when it at least reached the finals.
As a result, NCAA teams had won the PCCL tournament more times than those from the UAAP which was not necessarily reflective much less conclusive of the power configuration in the country's collegiate basketball sphere.
Hence, with or without a tournament as the PCCL, we can only guess which of the collegiate champion teams from the UAAP and the NCAA is really better, or the best, the country's real collegiate champion.
This I think is where the Samahang Basketbolista ng Pilipinas (SBP) should come in as the country's national sports association for basketball.
Instead of primarily and almost solely involving itself with preparing the national men's and women's teams for international competitions, the SBP could serve as a catalyst in promoting high quality basketball competition also in the collegiate level by taking upon itself the organizing and hosting of a yearend national collegiate champions tournament.
The SBP by assuring and enforcing the full and wholehearted participation of the major league champion and runner up teams as well as any other teams that would qualify, could crown a one true national champion school team at the conclusion of such tournament which could be in a single round robin format with all teams playing each other.
I remember the old BAP back in the 60s sponsoring like tournament pitting teams from UAAP, NCAA and leagues from the provinces especially the Visayas from where cagers as Manny Paner, Estoy Estrada, Rosalio Martirez and later Abet Guidaben and Ramon Fernandez were discovered.
Paging the SBP.
The author Teodoro Medina Reynoso is a veteran boxing radio talk show host living in the Philippines. He can be reached at teddyreynoso@yahoo.com and by phone 09215309477.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Teodoro Medina Reynoso.
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