BAY AREA and TEXAS are Going to the Big Dance!
MLTT’s Final Four is now set: Bay Area and Texas join Carolina and Princeton at Championship Weekend in Chicago, April 27-28 at Gentile Arena of Loyola University. Get your tickets to witness this historic event in American table tennis.
April 8, 2024. Not to be eclipsed by the Beasts of the East, the Best of the West took center stage this past weekend and put on quite a show, fighting tooth and nail for the two playoff spots on the campus of Wichita State with some shocking results. In this game of midwestern musical chairs, the Portland Paddlers and Seattle Spinners found themselves chairless once the music stopped, as the Bay Area Blasters punched their ticket on Saturday, followed by the Texas Smash corralling the final spot on Sunday.
Going into the weekend, Portland came with their optimal roster and was a favorite to hang onto that 2nd playoff spot (leading 3rd place Texas by 11 points in the standings), but Coach Christian Lillieroos found that his best-laid plans had been sabotaged by an unfortunate, weeks-long lingering illness to their main man Kou Lei, which had sapped him of much of his energy. Though he gamely battled in singles, doubles and the Golden Game on Friday night against Texas, it was quickly apparent that he was a mere shadow of his normal self…and with Portland relying so heavily on King Kou all season long, with him at way less than 100%, they too seemed to be a shadow of themselves. Despite the always-game efforts of Jiwei Xia, Tyrese Knight, and Isaac Vila, they dropped their two matches against Texas and Bay Area when it still mattered, only notching a Sunday win against Seattle when everything had already been decided. Still, Portland was right there until the final weekend with Olympics-bound super-serene Rachel Sung displaying her best quality of the season…and so it’s evident that Seattle is already a strong team that will only get better next season. They can take a little time to console themselves, analyze what went wrong and what their needs might be, and start planning to improve their roster depth with the upcoming draft.
Speaking of the Spinners, credit all of them and Coach Luba Sadovska for battling all weekend despite being all but mathematically eliminated after their Friday evening loss to Bay Area. If Seattle was only playing for pride, then it’s apparent that they have a lot of it. Nikhil Kumar was in his usual high-energy zone of focus (punctuated with his awesome Harimoto-level post point celebrations), Paul Qi made some eyes go big with his much improved play including the Majorponghead Upset of the Week with his statement win over Bay Area’s Lashin Elsayed…but it was perhaps the leonine ferocity with which Olajide Omatayo played all weekend (until he too succumbed to illness on Sunday) that characterized how Seattle went down in a blaze of indomitable glory, which produced incredible Shot of the Year nominees like this:
Let’s now take a short trip down memory lane. Step into Majorponghead’s Waaaayback Time Machine and re-read our very first article. You’ll recall that we picked the Blasters as our preseason #1 in the West Division (we’ll allow ourselves a quick pat on the back here, since our top four preseason picks have indeed all qualified for the playoffs). It was in that article that we stated Bay Area had constructed the closest thing to a perfect team in MLTT, with strength up top and some serious depth throughout. Some crazy things happened along the way - the loss of Tianrui Zhang, replaced by Senura Silva…the injury to Oriol Monzo in a celebratory scrum in Pleasanton…a knee injury to Tao Wenzhang…juggling absences by Ma Jingbao, Lily Zhang and Lashin Elsayed, to name a few. But through it all, Coach Maggie Tian kept her team focused on the ultimate goal. With Ma Jinbao finally acclimating himself to MLTT’s unique pressure cooker style of play and displaying a decent semblance of the quality we’ve seen from him at WTT events and more recently in winning the US Open, and with the ascension of Alexis Douin plus the aforementioned Silva, the Blasters have fulfilled their potential and become the powerhouse they are on paper. When Bay Area smoked the Spinners in their GG on Friday night en route to a 14-7 victory, they put themselves in prime position for the clinching moment the next afternoon against Portland. It must have a been a satisfying moment for new team owner John Yapaola to witness.
Mind-blowing shots like this one by former free agent Senura Silva are why Bay Area finds themselves at the top of the table - having fulfilled its preseason promise - after the first MLTT regular season.
The hottest team in the latter half of the regular season, the Texas Smash’s momentum was in danger of being halted by a wee baby, aka David McBeath’s absence last month for the birth of his first child. Down 11 points to Portland for the 2nd playoff spot coming into Wichita, Texas undoubtedly caught a big break with the usually indomitable Kou Lei’s illness. But with Coach Jörg Bitzigeio once again unable to attend in person AND stalwart Yoan Rebetez also absent, Texas certainly had plenty of its own challenges to deal with, and overcame a lot to turn in a sparkling, clutch 3-0 performance when it mattered the most. The aforementioned MacBeath was back and despite showing some minor signs of rust, was a force playing for the first time in the C/D position (as Nandan Naresh’s recent exploits in US tournaments had his USATT rating creep a few points over that of MacBeath’s). Hiromitsu Kasahara was once again both a reality and fantasy beast, anchoring his team in singles, doubles and the GG, while Darryl Tsao continued to turn heads with his inexorably improving play despite a complete lack of faith by his father (check out his rather revealing post match interview with Evan Lepler and Sean O’Neill after his win against Bay Area’s Alexis Douin). The imperturbable Amy Wang’s crisp and clinical off-the-bounce shotmaking was on full display all weekend, witnessed once again by the Amy Army Stans in the livestream chat…if you have even the slightest thought of making anything less than a glowing compliment of Amy’s play, be forewarned that it’s not advisable unless you enjoy being outed, shouted down, cancelled, doxxed, swatted, or all of the above. Is any one TT player in America as beloved as Amy? Hopefully the Amy Army will be out in force for Championship Weekend in Chicago. Finally, a shout-out to free agent extraordinaire Nishant Lebaka, who has now played critical roles in delivering both of his teams, Princeton and Texas, to the playoffs. It was therefore especially fitting that it was Lebaka who officially sent the Smash into the playoffs with his GG victory point over Bay Area.
For the second event in a row Texas was coached remotely by Coach Bitzigeio from Germany. It’s been working so well that perhaps when he’s in Chicago, Bitzigeio might consider coaching remotely from the nearby players lounge?
So after a long, wild and grueling regular season, the Final Four is set. Will the Blasters blast their way to the championship? Or will it be a Carolinian rush to golden glory? Perhaps Texas will smash all other contenders to the wayside? Then again, it’s possible that the MLTT world will revolve around Princeton after all is said and done. Book your flights and hotel rooms NOW, for April 27-28th in Chicago to catch the crowning climax of MLTT’s first season. We will see you there! First person to come up to us and correctly identify us as Majorponghead gets a free pair of (used) solar eclipse glasses.
We have a great idea for a new expansion franchise name when MLTT decides it’s time for a team in the southwest….The El Paso Eclipse. Doesn’t that have a nice ring (of fire) to it?
