Portland/Bay Area Vault into Playoff Position while Texas/Seattle Stumble

The formidable 1-2 punch of Kou Lei and Jiwei Xia led the way for Portland’s resurgence this past weekend in Seattle.

February 27, 2023. With our apologies to all our beloved and loyal readers accustomed to a more comprehensive post-match article, we’re keeping this one short and sweet due to some big changes in Majorponghead headquarters. Yes, we are talking about renovations and expansion! But in the short term this also means moving boxes, contractors everywhere, and chaos. So bear with us as we grow, we promise to be back better than ever soon.

There are more than a few former tournament directors on our staff, and for the second event in a row (Winter Haven prior to this), we got what they used to call “perfect round robins,” meaning a 3-0 record, a 2-1, a 1-2, and an 0-3. For tourney directors, this kind of result is perfect because the results are clear, and one can determine the first-second-third-fourth place finishers at a glance, without the need for any kind of tiebreakers.

Portland Paddlers: 3-0 (jumped from last place to the 2nd playoff spot, 5 points behind the top spot)

Bay Area Blasters: 2-1 (moved up from 2nd place into 1st, 5 points in the lead)

Texas Smash: 1-2 (dropped from 1st to 3rd, 11 points out of a playoff spot)

Seattle Spinners: 0-3 (dropped from 3rd place to last, 27 points out of a playoff spot)

This MLTT season in the West has thus far been an exercise in observed, unpredictable schizophrenia…with teams taking turns dominating and then stumbling. In a nearly 180 degree turn from the Portland event in February, it was the Bay Area Blasters and especially the Portland Paddlers’ time to shine in Seattle, with shorthanded Texas and hometown cursed Spinners taking it on the chin (or in the case of Texas, on the lower bezel of their iPad…more on this later). Look no further than the before and after standings to see what we mean:

Never was it more clear than this past weekend how “availability is the best ability” as the full rosters of Portland and Bay Area led to big wins, while the shorthanded squads of Texas and Seattle could not overcome their missing teammates - David McBeath for Texas and Aditya Sareen for Seattle. The Return of the Jedi Master Tao Wenzhang from a knee injury was a forceful one as he stabilized the lineup, allowing Lashin Elsayed and Senura Silva to play in the C/D position where they did a lot of damage. Master Tao also posted a sparkling 14-8 record in the Golden Game, not bad for someone coming off of a knee injury!

The Master Chef was back and the Blasters were cooking with GAS!

The Bay Area Blasters without Tao Wenzhang was like the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry.

Team MVPs for the Seattle event were…

Portland Paddlers: Kou Lei (8-1 singles, 8-1 doubles, 14-9 GG) King Kou was his usual dominant self, but a massive honorary mention to Rachel Sung who obviously also went 8-1 in doubles but was even better in the Golden Games, posting a pretty unreal 13-4 record while deftly avoiding all three post match celebrations.

Bay Area Blasters: Ma Jingbao (7-2 singles, 13-9 GG), and with all due respect to Tao Wenzhang, whose return meant everything for Bay Area, the real MJB finally showed up and it was awesome. Finally the MLTT fans got to see MJB close to the form that got him all the recent WTT glory!

Texas Smash: Hiromitsu Kasahara (5-4 singles, 4-5 doubles, 11-12 GG), matched up against the best of the west, Kasahara held his own. Best 3rd round draft pick of this inaugural MLTT season?

Seattle Spinners: Johan Hagberg (4-5 singles, 9-3 GG), a lone ray of golden sun in an otherwise gloomy weekend for the hometown Spinners, Hagberg answered the call 3x and delivered a trio of 3-1 GG performances. Sadly, only one post match interview, but in it Hagberg introduced his new “smoky intensity” persona and our hands are still shaking from watching it.

It takes a huge performance even to get into the Team MVP discussion with Kou Lei, but Rachel Sung was a force to be reckoned with all weekend. Her play in doubles was every bit as crucial to Portland’s 8-1 domination of the other pairings, and her 13-4 GG performance was one of the best we’ve seen all season. It might be wrong to say Rachel has ice water in her veins, but that’s only because water freezes at 32 degrees and we’re not sure her body temperature gets that high.

Majorponghead’s Upset of the Week award goes to Darryl Tsao of the Texas Smash, for his 3-0 sweep of Seattle’s Andrew Cao. This was a case of the then 46th ranked player taking the 12th ranked All-Star out back behind the shed.

In Seattle, Texas was missing both David McBeath Coach Jörg Bitzigeio…but only his physical presence. Coach Bitzigeio’s dedication to his Texas team was so great that he downloaded his consciousness into a rudimentary first gen Avatar-style robot and was able to coach in real time. Here we see E-Bitzi giving out some final instructions to Nishant Lebaka while Darryl Tsao looks on with a rather disappointed look on his face, perhaps with higher expectations than current technology allows.