Last night, in a surprising turn of events for many, Shaun Ildefonso announced on his Twitter account that he was leaving Ateneo to join the NU Bulldogs. You can find his entire message below: Ateneo will always be home. Thank you for the One Big Fight 💙 pic.twitter.com/uV2usLF7bx — Shaun Ildefonso (@ShaunIldefonso) May 29, 2017 The gist of his message is this: He's joining NU to join his dad, and he feels like with the Bulldogs, his athletic potential will be fully realized. The rest of his message has him thanking friends that he made during his stay in college, and the rest of the Ateneo community. For the case of this piece, only two facts are important: Shaun Ildefonso is going to NU, and a big reason for that happens to be his dad, Danny Ildefonso. So how do these factors affect not only Shaun, but other things as well? Let's talk about just that. How the decision affects Shaun It's important that we discuss the primary subject of this entire exercise...

(Photo Credit: Filoil Flying V Sports) When you talk about NCAA teams in the Filoil Flying V Preseason Tournament, the Lyceum Pirates and the JRU Heavy Bombers are the ones who have stood out thus far. The Heavy Bombers have shown that they're a team worth keeping an eye on after their opening day upset victory against the heavily favored De La Salle Green Archers. Ever since that victory, they've performed admirably led by their big gun in Teytey Teodoro.  The Pirates have started to receive comparisons to the Letran Knights team that surprised everyone during NCAA Season 92 thanks to their unorthodox press, and their high-octane attack. They've been extremely tough to stop, and a big reason for that is none other than the Baby Beast himself CJ Perez.  As both teams continue to make noise, all of a sudden, a loud roar is heard. The Heavy Bombers and the Pirates stand still. San Beda emerges and tells both teams as if they're Madison Montgomery from Amer...

(Photo Credit: Filoil Flying V Sports) Coming into the 2017 Collegiate Basketball season, most people expected the game plan against La Salle to be simple: Swarm Ben Mbala with defenders down low, and force other Green Archers to kill you from outside. Theoretically, it made sense. La Salle's three-point shooting is sub-par after all. At the same time, La Salle no longer has a guy who they could just dump the ball to if Ben's being swarmed with defenders like a Jeron Teng. In short, the search for that elusive second option! Sadly, there's no one who's shown consistency to be that other guy beside Big Ben. Aljun Melecio and Ricci Rivero have shown good things, but only in spurts. Andrei Caracut isn't getting much minutes because of his woes defensively. Leonard Santillian remains an unproven option. So if Big Ben fails, where does La Salle go to? Well, guess what? La Salle's found a solution to this problem of theirs! The solution is well... to keep ...

The UP Fighting Maroons managed to eke out a solid victory against the CSB Blazers in the Filoil Flying V Preseason Cup led by Paul Desiderio's 22 points and 10 rebounds. For more on last week's Filoil action, check out the Morning Rundown .  Otherwise, here are some photos from yesterday's action between the Fighting Maroons and the Blazers. All photos courtesy of Mico Ongkeko. Give him a follow here ! 

It's been a while since we've had a rundown. With the SEABA tournament out of the way (congrats Gilas!), it's time to go back to some Collegiate Basketball action. So, what's happened in the Filoil Flying V tournament in the past week? La Salle and UST had a (kind of) brawl! Just last week, Marvin Lee and new Green Archer Ramil Tero were nearly involved in a brawl in the blowout win of La Salle against the struggling UST Growling Tigers. The worst part in all of this is how the brawl happened near the end of the game, where the result of the game was set in stone already.  This is a very bad look for a UST team that looks like it's going to struggle immensely this upcoming Season 80. Frustrations are only going to boil even further as they try to find ways to win, and with the personnel that they have, it's going to be quite the task. For the case of La Salle, this should serve as a lesson for them. They're a dominant team entering the up...

(Photo Credit: Filoil Flying V Sports) Being unbeaten usually means something good is happening. That's true, for the most part. You're winning, the result teams desire to get when they play basketball games. The Adamson Soaring Falcons happen to be a team that's unbeaten in the Filoil Flying V Preseason Cup. Does that mean that they're doing good things? Yeah, they are. They're a team that's utilizing their depth and talent extremely well to be able to eke out victories. But that's exactly the problem with these Soaring Falcons. They're just barely escaping with wins instead of blowing teams off the roof with the amount of talent that they have. The reality of it is that, if a team wants to be able to blow teams off the roof, talent's isn't enough (unless the disparity is THAT big). A team has to be able to mesh that talent well in order for it to work like a well-oiled machine.  Right now, the Soaring Falcons have really great pa...

(Photo Credit: Patrick Gunnacao, Humblebola) It's hard to believe that the UST basketball program is the team that's made it to the UAAP Finals the most for the past five years. Surprising right? Well, it's actually true. Season 75 - ADMU def. UST Season 76 - DLSU def. UST Season 77 - NU def. FEU Season 78 -  FEU def. UST Season 79 -  DLSU def. ADMU DLSU's made it twice. Ateneo's made it twice. So has FEU. UST? They've made it a whopping three times for the past five years. Another thing that separates UST from the rest of the Finalists from the past five years? They've never won the UAAP championship. They've been bridesmaids three times now. It's only a matter of time before they become brides themselves, raising the UAAP title at the end of the basketball season. Sadly, from being just bridesmaids, they've been relegated to just guests, watching the rest of the teams in the UAAP try to become a bride. Anytime a prog...