That’s No Moon…That’s a Fully Armed and Operational Death Star! Western Division Roster Reveal
November 16, 2023. When Majorponghead’s inside source at MLTT provided us with the rosters for this weekend’s Pleasanton, CA Western Division event (buy your tickets here), our jaws hit the floor. We felt like a young Luke Skywalker when Obi-Wan told Han Solo to turn the Millennium Falcon around, after seeing the Death Star for the first time. But conversely, we have a gooooood feeling about this! Raise the blast shield up on your helmet, put your lightsaber down, and take a look for yourself:
The rosters for this weekend’s Battle by the Bay will feature the top lineups for all four teams, or close to it. We’ve already started waiting for the livestream to begin on MLTT’s Youtube livestream channel.
There are only two notable absences: the Seattle Spinners will be missing their young phenom and track star, Aditya Sareen while the Bay Area Blasters will be missing the services of The Kingslayer, Lashin Elsayed.
Let’s not bury the headline any further here: Ma Jinbao is making his MLTT debut for the hometown Blasters. Unless you’ve been living on a moisture-harvesting farm on some remote outer world desert planet frequenting dive bars which are wretched hives of scum and villainy, you’d know by now that MJB has been putting up some remarkable performances in the WTT circuit recently, reaching the Round of 16 in recent tournaments in singles, men’s doubles and mixed doubles, and taking down some big name competitors along the way. We’re not going to get into the details, but suffice it to say, this is a Jedi-level player taking his rightful place beside Jedi Master Tao Wenzhang to present the most fearsome 1-2 punch in the entire league. Add to that the incomparable Lily Zhang plus super-rookie Senura Silva playing in the C/D position along with Spain’s Oriol Monzo (also making his MLTT debut), and the Blasters seem all but assured to break the MLTT home team curse in a big way. Grand Admiral Maggie Tian has assembled what can only be described as her Death Star Lineup and no opposing team will be considered too remote to serve as an effective demonstration of the firepower of her fully armed and operational battle station. We’ll go out on a very short limb to predict that Bay Area fans are gonna be rocking by the bay this weekend (editor’s note: ixnay onay ethey arWarsStay eferencesray).
The #122 ranked player in the world Ma Jinbao makes his long-anticipated MLTT debut this weekend for the hometown Bay Area Blasters.
To dismiss any lineup headed up by the mighty Kou Lei would be just stupid, and with rebel leader…er….Coach Christian Lillieroos bringing his A lineup to Pleasanton, the Portland Paddlers will take the #1 contender’s spot to unseat the favored home team. King Kou and Jiwei Xia can go toe-to-toe with anyone in this league and with both Rachel Sung and Tyrese Knight returning from Pan Am Games duty, don’t be surprised if the Paddlers give Bay Area a big run for their money. We here at the Majorponghead office have a standing rule that when we watch Portland matches, we wear our dancing shoes in case we get a Coach Lillieroos post-match interview. MLTT’s motto may be “So you think you’re good?” but Coach Lillieroos has his own: “So you think you can dance?” We think can dance, Coach Lillieroos, as long as you lead!
Portland’s Jiwei Xia
Things are always looking up when Jiwei takes the stage!
The Texas Smash get a trio of key teammates back for this tour stop, headlined by the newly-crowned Pan Am Games women’s singles gold medalist Amy Wang. Cool Hand Amy will be joined by Hiromitsu Kasahara, and Nandan Naresh Naresh. Anchored by the equally calming presence of their #1 David McBeath (we have a theory that when they play doubles, MacBeath and Wang give each other service signs telepathically), Texas will be looking to get back in the saddle after shooting themselves in the foot last month in Texas. Coach Jörg Bitzigeio now has the horses he needs to give it a run.
David MacBeath is exactly how we like our Shakespearean leading men: Laconic yet iconic
When we last saw the Seattle Spinners, we actually couldn’t see them because after Aditya Sareen’s 4G (Golden Game Golden Point) win over Portland’s Kou Lei, he led his teammates on a now-viral forever-insane sprint around the arena. Kudos to the MLTT mobile camera crew for eventually catching up to them. But this weekend, Sareen has run off again for a series of international tournaments in Europe. Hey, when you’re the #37 ranked player in the world, the world deserves to see you play. Olajide Omotayo moves up the ladder to take the #2 spot next to Nikhil Kumar, with the crafty lefty Johan Hagberg returning to action after last month’s hiatus, otherwise the roster is unchanged. With Sareen’s absence, the Spinners may find the A/B singles matches challenging all weekend, but their depth bows to no one, with Hagberg, Andrew Cao, Ondrej Lapcik and Fabiola Diaz. The pundits may have them as underdogs, but the great thing about youth and social media is that the younger generation are always too busy on social media to pay attention to pundits. Coach Luba Sadovska will try to take her squad out for another spin around the arena this weekend…it might be a less compact and convenient celebration than a Florida Crocs chomp, but we’d still love to see another madcap Seattle run around the arena. The way Omotayo hurdled the barrier on the heels of Sareen last month, we are assigning him Heat 1: Lane 1 for any race this weekend.
Voice of Table Tennis Adam Bobrow works the crowd last month. The dad in the background looks like that because he just got snaked by Adam and asked WOT HAPPEN?!?! Spectator attendance at MLTT matches have been steadily on the rise, with a near full house in Chicago and the promise of even more fans coming to Pleasanton.
The 3rd week of Western Division action in Pleasanton promises to be a packed house as advance ticket sales have been brisk, according to MLTT insiders. Crowd and viewership numbers have been steadily on the rise from week to week, and while we will be at home watching on the livestream (the Evan Lepler/Sean O’Neill/Matt Hetherington broadcasts have been nothing short of fantastic), nothing beats seeing the MLTT live. The excitement in the arena is something that has to be experienced to full appreciate, plus there’s now so much going on in the fan zone, it’s quite the scene. Players have been super accessible, friendly, and more than happy to give you or your kid (or both) an autograph or a selfie (or both). Get your tickets and go! And keep on pongin’, Pongheads!
