250 teams eyed in national collegiate tilt

The Philippine Collegiate Championship has become a national championship in scope with a projected 250 schools from across the country vying for the crown.

The organizing Philippine Collegiate Champions League headed by Rey Gamboa and the BAP-Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas under president Manny Pangilinan formalized a tie-up yesterday for the staging of the event starting with regional eliminations in the second quarter of the year and culminating with the national finale in December.

“This is now a truly nationwide tournament featuring the best in college basketball. The league will also help expose provincial teams and their players. It’s a good opportunity for them specially now that Metro Manila teams are getting a hard time tapping provincial players because these (provincial teams) would rather hold on to their players,” said Pangilinan.

The tourney’s forerunner was the Champions League which was the brainchild of former national coach Joe Lipa.

But the Philippine Collegiate Championship has become bigger and better with the tourney getting all-out support from the national cage body.

Unable to achieve its original goal of merging the UAAP and the NCAA, the SBP instead pushed for the improvement of the Champions League.

A total of P500,000 grant in the form of scholarship and athletic equipment plus the right to represent the country in the Universiade Games in Serbia next year are put at stake in the event, adopting the theme: “There can only be one.”

The road to the finals consists of four levels, the first of which will have the 250 collegiate teams competing in their respective mother leagues to determine the top four squads that will represent the nine regional areas – Regional Area 1 (Dagupan, Pangasinan and Baguio), Regional Area 2 (Pampanga and Bulacan), Regional Area 3 (Quezon and Bicol provinces), Regional Area 4 (Iloilo and Bacolod), Regional Area 5 (Dumaguete and Bohol), Regional Area 6 (Tacloban, Ormoc and Samar), Regional Area 7 (Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Misamis Oriental and CARAGA), Regional Area 8 (Davao, Socsargen and Maguindanao) and Regional Area 9 (Zamboanga and Misamis Oriental.

The two teams from each zone will join the eight seeded teams to the “Sweet Sixteen” to be played from Nov. 23 to Dec. 7. The UAAP champion and runner-up together with its NCAA counterparts, and the best teams from CUSA, CESAFI, NAASCU and NCRAA/UCAA are the seeded entries in the knockout stage.

“Now teams will not just be contended winning the championship in their respective mother leagues because they can look forward to a higher goal like winning the regional, zonal and then aim for the highest, which is the national title,” said Gamboa.

Ateneo beat UST in the national final last year.