The unrelenting Ateneo machine is back at it again.
With the first round of the UAAP Season 84 halfway finished, the Blue Eagles find themselves atop the standings with an unblemished 4-0 record, highlighted by dominant wins over perceived top contenders De La Salle University and University of the Philippines. Ateneo is now on a 30-game win streak, and there honestly looks to be no end in sight.
Right now, Ateneo has the best offense AND the best defense in the league – and frankly, it’s not even close. The Blue Eagles are 12.1 points better than league average on offense, and 9.6 points better than league average on defense. In total, they have a plus21.6 net rating, which means that if we play games out to a 100 possession basis, they’ve outpaced opponents by that margin. To put it in NBA terms, they’ve outgunned their opponents by twice the amount the 73-9 Golden State Warriors did. What’s even crazier is that this is the THIRD straight year they’ve outpaced their opponents by this margin. (They’ve had a plus-21 net rating ever since Ange Kouame took over the starting center role.)
Their dominance lies in the fact that they can beat you on either end of the floor and they can counter literally anything you throw at them. They’re a complete team with nearly every type of weapon on the roster.
The first Ateneo-La Salle game since 2019 only serves as a grim reminder for the seven other teams of that fact – an illustration of how you can throw anything at the Blue Eagle but nothing will stick, because coach Tab Baldwin and his boys will just find ways of beating it.
First, let’s talk about hedging. To “hedge” a pick and roll means that the screener’s defender comes up to the level of the screen and “bumps” the ball handler. Teams do this to prevent penetration, pull-up jumpers, or force players to pick the ball up or give it up. This was employed by La Salle throughout the game against the Ateneo guards, especially SJ Belangel. Since Belangel is neither tall nor explosive, this ideally should take him out of the game.
In this possession, Bright Nwanko hedges and Belangel isn’t tall enough to deliver the ball to Kouame. He gives it to Dave Ildefonso, who gets hedged and is forced to pick up the ball. Nothing materializes, and the possession ends on a Kouame long midrange jumper in the latter half of the shot clock. Removing Ateneo’s playmakers and stifling their offense is the primary goal of the hedge, and it’s safe to say that was achieved in this possession.
The hedge wasn’t just employed strictly for Belangel. It was a huge part of the Archers’ game plan in general. In this one, it forces Chris Koon to pick the ball up. Notice Justine Baltazar tagging the rolling Kouame to dissuade a pass to him and the play ends with a missed contested triple.
Belangel was scoreless at the end of the first half and played only five minutes, but he ended up with eight points to his name by adjusting to the hedge and countering it.
Ateneo scored seven straight points off the back of Belangel executing a UCLA cut, a cut off of a high post screen at the elbow; the cutter cuts from the slot or top of the key down to the block. This caught the defense napping with La Salle’s bigs too high up to contest the layup.
The UCLA cut wasn’t just to get Belangel an easy bucket. The main idea behind is to get separation between Belangel and his man. That way, when he gets the ball back for a ball screen, he faces less pressure, which allows him to see the floor better. This is achieved by him quickly relocating back to the perimeter after the initial cut. Raffy Verano relocating to the opposite side and Ildefonso moving to the strongside corner also help create space for Belangel (note how Evan Nelle has to navigate around his teammates as if they were screens). When Mike Phillips has to hedge, Baltazar can’t tag so Schonny Winston has to do it. Ildefonso simply lifts from the corner to the wing and that’s all too easy of a read for Belangel.
Ateneo is pretty mean. They will run plays repeatedly until you prove that you can do something about it. So of course, they run this UCLA set for Belangel again. This time, he doesn’t give it to the shooter. Kouame connects well with the screen on CJ Austria, and Belangel punishes him by using his momentum against him with a crossover. Nelle is stuck in no man’s land, defending neither Belangel nor Andrade, and Kouame seals his man to prevent a contest. Easy layup for SJ.
The neat thing about Baldwin is that he doesn’t just want to beat things one way. He can, and will, find multiple ways to beat a concept thrown at him by opposing coaches.
The hedge forces Belangel to pass the ball, but he sends the ball to Koon, who by my metrics is an elite passer as well. Baltazar doesn’t place a solid tag on Kouame, as Phillips recovers to the play and his man, Verano, would be free from three. Kouame is able to seal his man and Koon places the ball where only he can catch it and it’s an easy layup. This works because Kouame will have his original defender behind him, and the tagger will have to return to his original man, which leaves empty space between Kouame and the rim. Koon is able to see over the defense, and he’s more than capable of making that delivery.
Now, let’s talk about what they do on the defensive end of things. The Archers held on in the first half but were completely shut down in the second half, where they were held to only 25 points on a putrid 30.1-percent True Shooting (16.7-percent below league average).
This may be a bit controversial, but La Salle’s halfcourt offense was generally unchanged in between quarters. They weren’t getting the best looks, and they weren’t bending Ateneo’s defensive scheme. There were some changes, like Ateneo switching everything late in the fourth, but in general, they were taking contested shots without pressuring Ateneo too much.
In this vid, we have a sample of the type of shots La Salle was taking in the halfcourt. Generally, the shots they were taking and making weren’t exactly open shots, but rather just a product of scoring over the defense. They did have two field goals of Ateneo’s defensive errors (a Mark Nonoy three in transition after bad transition defense, and another Nonoy three where Gian Mamuyac misread the play), but in general, they weren’t exactly stretching out the Ateneo defense.
Now, look at this sample of shots they took in the second half, where there’s not really much difference in terms of the degree of difficulty. So where’s the difference? Look at Phillips. Excluding him, La Salle only had 21 points on 34.3% True Shooting (nearly identical to the second half where Phillips was held to just two points). Now we see that the Archers’ performance in the first half was largely driven by Phillips’ ability to finish at the rim, especially on second-chance opportunities.
In all three of these putbacks, there isn’t exactly anyone boxing him out; he’s free to prepare for a leap and has a decently clear lane to swoop in. He scored 11 points, mostly on putbacks because he just wasn’t a huge point of emphasis for the Eagles on defense.
Of course, that changed in the second half when he was held to two points. The stat sheet will tell you he had five offensive rebounds in the second half, but the film will tell you that they were not the same rebounds he was getting earlier. We see that he only made one basket off of a putback in the quarter, that there was usually a man between him and the rim, and that most of his offensive rebounds didn’t create situations where he could get a shot off. Despite having more offensive rebounds in the second half, the quality of possessions springing from them was very different. After Ateneo keyed in on this, the Archers were pretty much cooked.
The reason why Ateneo is so good is that they have answers for everything you can think to throw at them – a two-way team that is outlier levels of the elite in both directions. One way of putting it is that the Blue Eagles are a nightmare that the rest of the league can’t figure out a way to wake up out of. As of now, the only way to possibly beat them is for random shooting variance to be wildly against them, meaning your team needs to be really, really hot and they need to be really, really cold. Like the cruel sands of time, Ateneo continues to march forward towards what increasingly feels like a fourth straight UAAP basketball championship.
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