SPORTS | March 16,
2018
More than 10,000 high school ballers coming from 80 different provinces
all over the Philippine archipelago are set to showcase their stuff amidst fair
competition as the National Basketball Training Center (NBTC) is slated to
culminate its seventh season with a March Madness-style National Finals which
will take place at the SM Mall of Asia Arena on March 18-23, 2018.
Reigning UAAP juniors' champions Ateneo Blue Eaglets will try to cement
their status as the best high school basketball team in the country, battling
31 other squads in the six-day affair. The Blue Eaglets, fresh from their
recent victory against National University Bullpups to capture the title, are
the top overall seeds in the competition followed by NCAA juniors' champion La
Salle Greenhills, Chiang Kai Shek and CESAFI king University of the Visayas.
Other seeded teams include National University, Malayan University, Sacred
Heart College - Ateneo de Cebu, and San Beda University.
What makes this year's affair more interesting and intriguing is the
participation of teams from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United
States composed of players coming from Filipino communities. These teams along
with the wildcard teams will compete in a seeding round on March 18 against
squads from Bataan, Bacolod, Ormoc, Dumaguete, Pagadian, Dagupan and San Fernando
where the final seeding will be determined. Teams will then play against each
other based on their rankings, with the winning teams advancing to the next
round and the losing ones to get another chance in the Division 2 bracket.
The championship games for Division 1 and 2 will take place at the SM
Mall of Asia Arena on March 23, 2018 along with the All-Star Game where the top
ranked high school ballers compete against each other in a friendly showdown between
two teams headlined by Ateneo's Kai Sotto and La Salle Greenhills' Joel Cagulangan.
Since this year's NBTC National Finals is patterned after the US NCAA's March
Madness brackets, there is no word to describe the affair rather than being an
unpredictable sight to enjoy.
