It was the night before UE’s first game of the season. I was curious as to where the mind of Mo Tañedo, the Red Warriors’ starting point guard, goes before a big gameday. I sent him a message, asking what his pregame mindset looks like.

“There’s a lot of outside noise leading up to games,” Mo replied. “I just like to block that out when I step foot on the court before games.”

Basketball hasn’t been very kind to Mo and the UE Red Warriors recently. The losses have been piling up: 21 straight, dating back to Season 87 two years ago. The noise was getting louder. A quick scroll on Facebook and the comments showed a dark pattern: 

Another 0-14 season incoming. 

Sure win..for their opponents.

They’ll get blown out.

It’s easy to be engulfed in the eternal dumpster flame that is the comment section, if one is not careful. Mo has gotten used to it, in a way that negativity no longer breaks him, but molds him. He has gotten smarter and strategic about it. He scrolls past the comments on most days. On some, he doesn’t. 

“Sometimes, I’ll read a comment or two to motivate myself,” he said. 

On gameday, I stood by the hallway where the players came out to catch a glimpse of Mo. One by one, the Red Warriors stepped out onto the SM Mall of Asia Arena court. Tope Lagat, UE’s de facto bucket-getter, looked chill. JM Edoukou, UE’s foreign student-athlete, was locked in. Cole Cruz-Dumont sparkled with UE royalty. No Mo. 

With all of his teammates already getting loose on the floor, Mo was the last to exit the locker room, breaking into a half sprint to join his team. If his online feed had been stained ugly with hate and doubt the night before, his face certainly showed no signs of it. 

“I keep my focus by focusing on what I can control and not letting the thought of the moment get too big for me,” Mo told me the night before. 

This was a big moment. For UE, sure, because the first game after a winless season signals, as their fans would surely hope, a new phase. More so for Ateneo, as a team, as an institution, and as a community, navigating the most difficult times after two of their members – Rene Baterbonia and Divine Adili – tragically passed away during an offseason team activity. For Mo, whose assignment was to, one, make sure everyone in his team eats, and two, starve Jared Bahay, this was huge. Before joining the team huddle, Mo hung back by himself, again, and put up shots. A few seconds of quiet. A fleeting moment of peace. A silent prayer.  

I wondered to myself right at tip-off how these students take it all in: the desire to compete, the dedication to the grind, the pressure to perform, the grades to keep, the friends to make, the people to please, the drums, the noise. Are the kids okay? 

Mo talked nonstop on the floor. He was relentlessly throwing out directions, mapping out where his teammates should be on offense. Every dead ball was a chance for Mo to course-correct. In almost every possession, UE head coach Chris Gavina was on his ear. The Red Warriors personified work-in-progress, a team on a constant state of build. The Blue Eagles were on a different mission. The deficit ballooned. UE found themselves down by 30. Mo finished the game on the bench, scoreless. Bahay finished with 17 points.

Mo had promised we’d talk after the game, but I was a bit worried. Why should he talk after a brutal 27-point loss? Why would he allow me to add the noise? On the same spot where I was before tip-off, Mo caught my eye.

“We’ll talk after the huddle,” he said, assuringly. 

I waited outside the locker room and could only imagine what the conversation was like inside. By then, just minutes after the game, comments on social media already piled up on top of each other; some unkind and others outright harsh. Mo will just skip over some of these comments. The others, he might save as motivation when he needed it. 

Mo stepped out after 10 minutes, as he said he would. If the weight of the loss fell on him, he carried it with grace. 

“I’m already thinking about how we’re going to have an ability to compete against NU,” he said. 

“I think I’ve grown over the years. I won’t dwell on this loss as a player like last year, but I’m emerging as a leader on the team…just next-game mentality.”

College basketball won’t give you much time to dwell, which, depending on what type of player you are, could either be good or bad. There isn’t a lot of time to overthink, only enough time to recover and recalibrate. But how do you recover from 21 consecutive losses? How do you get up when faith is slipping away from the community that you play for? How do you cope?

“I know what I’m capable of and what the team is capable of. We’re grinding day in and day out,” Mo said.

“They don’t watch us at practice every single day. They don’t see us compete hard through the challenges and the ups and downs, so as long as I know what me and my brothers can do and what the coaching staff is capable of, I’ll trust them over what the outside noise fans are saying.”

Road to 0-14.

Same story. 

Whipping boys.

These are actual comments on a UE Red Warriors fan account, which is understandably frustrated at the recurring unfavorable result, but also boldly unkind to the players, the coaches, and the management. Perhaps there are better ways of expressing disappointment than fostering a culture of disrespect. But such is the sickly condition of the internet now, where its common symptom is hurling insults. 

“If you know basketball, then those are the type of people that are kind, but people who just watch because it’s the UAAP, I think that’s where the bashers come in,” Mo said.

“But with the people who know basketball and they can see what’s actually going on the court, those are the people that you pay attention to…they know how players are and the struggle they go through.”

Mo is in that rare tier of athletes – and people – who know better than to get swayed and to get hurt by what he sees on his feed.

“A lot of my career, I’ve always listened to outside noise, I’ve always tried to compare myself to other people. Just looking at social media, I feel like social media plays a lot into people feeling down on themselves because they feel like they’re not doing enough because of everybody achieving everything and putting their accomplishments on social media,” he said. 

While we were talking by the hallway, the loud arena buzz surrounding college hoops served as background music. Mo switched up his volume, at times speaking at the top of his lungs to outdo the drums, then going soft to match the quiet. He spoke about the balance of going to war while still trying to protect his fellow student-athletes in the name of sportsmanship. He talked about shutting out the noise and putting the work in; about kindness online and toughness oncourt. Embracing feedback. Trusting in the work. Many different, conflicting things can exist at the same time.

“Everybody’s journey is different. We’re not all the same,” he said.

“If you put the work in and you trust in God, at the end of the day, that work will show and God will come through for you.”

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[Photos by Ino Muñoz; Artwork by Melvin Rodas]