AFTER two years, the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) finally returns on March 26 with the men’s basketball competition to usher in Season 84.
It will be a compact basketball action with the traditional double-round eliminations, Final Four and best-of-three Finals format still to be enforced but on a four games a day and thrice a week (Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday) schedule for the preliminaries. The league has yet to select a venue.
As in all leagues and tournaments, Season 84 will be in a bubble, according to UAAP President Emmanuel Calanog of host De La Salle.
Shuttered for two years by the pandemic, the UAAP—which dropped Season 83 that will, in league history bear an asterisk with a footnote that it was scrapped as during World War II—will feature six other events during the odd season.
“Two years? I think it’s worth the wait because we really considered the health and safety of our student athletes,” Calanog told a news conference on Friday in a restaurant in Pasig City. “The UAAP is back and we’re hoping that by next season [Season 85], we go full blast.”
Calanog announced that there will be an opening ceremony to kick off the return. But the affair will be pre-taped. He also said that the league is choosing among the Smart Araneta Coliseum, Mall of Asia Arena, Ynares Arena in Pasig City or the San Juan Arena as potential venue for the games.
The men’s basketball season is expected to end on May 12,—if the Final Four and Finals go the distance—and Calanog said the league could start holding the women’s volleyball competition immediately.
Also on tap, he said, are cheer dance, men’s and women’s 3X3, men’s beach volleyball, taekwondo’s poomsae and men’s and women’s virtual chess.
Calanog was joined in the press conference by UAAP board members Edwin Reyes of De La Salle and Mark Molina of Far Eastern University, Smart Sports head Jude Turcuato and Cignal FVP and Head of Channels and Content Management Sienna Olaso.
And because the basketball tournament will be played in a bubble, Calanog said all team members of the eight schools will be strictly confined to their respective quarters and will follow a closed circuit in sanitized buses to and from the venue.
“Everyone involved in the league is fully vaccinated,” Calanog said.
The fans and media—except for the staff of the league’s broadcast partner TV 5—will not be allowed in the venue.