IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS
Sneak peek of the official front cover of the MLTT Championship program guide. Repping their playoff-bound teams with honor are Amy Wang, Lily Zhang, Jishan Liang, and men’s MVP Enzo Angles!
April 23, 2024. The center of the US table tennis universe will be Chi-Town this coming weekend, where MLTT will crown its first ever champion. Four teams with title aspirations will be there to battle it out: the Bay Area Blasters, Carolina Gold Rush, Princeton Revolution and Texas Smash all fought through the gauntlet of MLTT’s regular season to make the Big Dance, but how they got here is now less important. What matters is how they will perform under the even brighter lights and on the even bigger stage of MLTT’s postseason playoffs.
The Final Four matchups.
The first semifinal will take place at 4pm on Saturday, pitting the #1 team out of the West, Bay Area, against the #2 team out of the East, Princeton. The second semifinal will happen at 7pm, with the #1 team from the East, Carolina, taking on the #2 team out of the West, Texas. The consolation match between semifinal losers will take place on Sunday at 12 noon, followed by the finals at 3pm. All teams at the time of this article’s publishing are set to field their strongest teams, so whatever happens will be a true test of each team’s mettle. There will, however, be an interesting change in the rules of play compared to the regular season.
From the program guide - the modified rules of play for Championship Weekend. Furious table tennis action is on the rise with Jinxin Wang, David McBeath, Senura Silva, and women’s MVP Hong Lin!
While all teams will travel with their full contingent of 6 players (5 men, 1 woman), there will be no restrictions on who must play. In other words, a coach may choose to play the same 4 men for both weekend matches. The biggest rule change, however, is one that is liable to make the players a bit nauseous. The individual singles and doubles matches (a total of 15 points up for grabs) will only serve to determine the advantage the leading team will have, going into the Golden Game. Additionally, for the playoffs, there will be no 5-point cap on how much a team may lead. And here’s the coup de grace: the winner of the Golden Game is the winner of the match. So theoretically, a team could sweep all 5 matches and go into the GG with a 15-0 lead. Also theoretically, they could lose the GG despite going into it with a 15-point lead and therefore lose the match! Yet more insanity from the evil genius mind of Commissioner Flint Lane, no doubt…but we are all here for it. The unfiltered nightmare fuel drama of the Golden Game has become the calling card of MLTT, so why not double down on it for the playoffs?
You’ve come to the wrong place if you’re looking for predictions, because as we previously stated, we are OUT of the prediction business. That said, we’d like to take a moment to point out that our first-ever article (“OH…IT’S ON! Preseason Polls for MLTT’s Inaugural Season are Out”) correctly predicted these four teams would make the playoffs, although we did pick the pecking order somewhat incorrectly. But that said, it’s been an absolute wild ride covering these teams and their differing paths to the playoffs. Each one of these teams have already proven that they’re made from the stuff of champions. We’re stoked to see who emerges atop the MLTT’s Iron Throne on Sunday!
In a sign of how much this title means to him, Princeton’s Koyo Kanamitsu had a special delivery of his secret weapon delivered to the loading dock of Gentile Arena, the site of this weekend’s playoff matches.
