SMART Sports to broadcast Ateneo games in Israel

Tab Baldwin

With the UAAP a month away, its member-schools have ramped up their preparations for their men's basketball tournament.

Ateneo de Manila is no different, as the Blue Eagles have flown to Tel Aviv to hold their overseas camp, with the objective of rebuilding the side that lost in the finals last year to the University of the Philippines.

Head coach Tab Baldwin shares, "We only have a couple of games. We are going there to flesh out our system even more. We need more offensive attacks and defensive sophistication."

The team has a simple objective in the Holy Land, just to be better.

"Just got to get a lot better. We have had such a disruptive buildup in June and July because of injuries. Ange [Kouame] just came back, Dave [Ildefonso] has only been back a couple of weeks. Same with Matthew Daves," Baldwin says.

He adds, "We don't have settled rosters and combinations that are used to working together. We have to get better and time is running."

The Israel camp will have a couple of friendly matches, both against second-division Liga Leumit sides.

The first one will be against A.S. Ramat HaSharon at 1030pm on Saturday, with the other one coming a couple of days later against Eliztur Eito Ashkelon at 9pm.

These matches will be streamed on the Facebook page of SMART Sports.

Ateneo's preparations for the upcoming season saw them claim the inaugural World University Basketball Series in Tokyo, as well as a defeat to the Bay Area Dragons of the East Asia Super League.