The Ateneo collegiate men's varsity basketball team was not always called the Blue Eagles.

This moniker was given to the Blue Eagles in 1926 when sports press noticed that the team would pray the Hail Mary (as the school’s patroness is the Immaculate Conception) during game time-outs and would win by the skin of their teeth.

[1][2] Ateneo is one of the four UAAP member schools that participate in all of the fifteen sporting events of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines.

Until 2020, The Guidon, the school's official student publication, gave specific names to differentiate the various varsity teams.

[3] However, beginning with UAAP Season 84 in May 2022, Ateneo de Manila University officially decided to unify student athletes and varsity teams under the "Blue Eagles" moniker moving forward, regardless of sport, gender, or age group.

A live eagle would lead the men's varsity basketball team at the start of a game in the NCAA as the team enters the basketball court for their warm-up with the school Band playing the fight song, "Blue Eagle – The King".

It left the NCAA in 1978 due to the league-wide violence prevalent at the time, and then joined the UAAP in the same year.

[13] The Ateneo Volleyball Program enjoyed a modest success in the NCAA, having won a total of nine championships during a ten-year period from 1967 to 1976.

The men's team were three-peat champions after winning in Seasons 2003–04, 2004–05 and 2005–06, a record that still holds today.