CROSSOVER WEEK REVIEW Part 1 of 2: Carolina Shines, Florida Chomps, Bay Area Blasts, and Chicago Winds (Up Happy)
The Rock Hill Sports Center was the incredible venue for the MLTT’s first ever Cross Division Event featuring all 8 teams from Eastern and Western Divisions…and Majorponghead was THERE in person to witness all the action as MLTT returned to the site of its origin story, when a select team of then-undrafted players wowwed the American sports public (and a few cornhole professionals) during ESPN’s The Ocho event.
December 4, 2023. WHAT. A. WEEKEND. This article is Part 1 of a 2-part review of MLTT’s Cross Division Event.
We’re still a bit cross-eyed from all the cross division action we witnessed and all the fun we experienced this past weekend. We’ll get to all the action and results shortly, but we want to start off by complimenting the MLTT team for the seriously unbelievable amount of toil and effort that went into staging such a spectacular event to showcase our beloved sport in the US. A huge long overdue shoutout to all the individuals from Commissioner Flint Lane, head referee and so much more Ed Hogshead (when you guys start a professional TT league, find yourself a head referee who also provides and installs lighting), the Matron Saint of MLTT Mimi Bosika, the group of young guns running ticket and merchandise sales, training ball kids, doing the photoshoots and managing the broadcast (just some of the guys we were privileged to meet: Ryan, Max, Jordan, Jed, Tapa, and Kenny), and last not but not least, the mission critical volunteers from all the ball kids to Claudine from the Seattle Spinners’ extended family who drove the courtesy shuttle tirelessly all weekend. Oh and how could we forget to mention the omnipresent always-working Chief Growth Officer John Yapaola, who even managed to turn the hotel bartender into a male Karen bellowing “THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT” then detailing all the mistakes the MLTT personnel made in the fine art of customering.
Fortunately there was also a rooftop bar where MLTT players and staff could retreat to and work on their customering etiquette. Pictured here are representatives from Bay Area Blasters, Princeton Revolution, Seattle Spinners, Portland Paddlers plus Matt Hetherington of the broadcast team and the aforementioned troublemaker, MLTT’s CGO John Yapaola recounting how he impatiently asked about the status of his dinner order a mere hour after placing it.
THE REVIEWS ARE IN!
We’ll grade each team’s overall performance somewhat on a curve based on their roster strength rating since there were unfortunately a number of significant absences, mostly on the western division teams.
Carolina Gold Rush: 4-0 record, 64 total team points earned, increased their lead in the Eastern Division over Florida from +18 to +27 points. Grade: A+. It was certainly an A+ worthy performance, even though Carolina came into this tilt as the overwhelming favorites with their first-place lineup stacked and intact, and were heavily favored to run the table, which they did. In the process, with #1 ranked Enzo Alles being Enzo, and #3 Hong Lin being Hong, with an ascendant Romain Lorentz locking down the team’s B position while super whiz kids Kai Zhang and Dupont Bastien plus The Great Northern Wall Jeremy “Captain Canada” Hazin combining like a multi-part Japanese anime Mecha to form a legendary robot warrior in the C/D positions, Carolina buried the competition with very little stress.
Jeremy: I’ll form the legs! Bastien: Arms and body! Kai: And I’ll form the head!
The only difference between Carolina’s Voltron and the real one is that Carolina doesn’t wait until it’s 20-20 in the Golden Game to (finally) form Blazing Sword and vanquish its enemy.
Carolina even set an MLTT record which may last longer than DiMaggio’s 56-game hit streak when they rolled Portland by the astonishing tune of 20-1, a feat that we have a hard time believing will happen again anytime soon. With an unblemished record in Rock Hill, this now marks two straight months since Carolina has suffered a team match loss as they also ran the table last month in Chicago.
Gold Rush MVP for the weekend goes to Enzo Angles. This decision was almost as much of a no-brainer as inducting South Carolina’s own Smoking’ Joe Frazier into the Boxing Hall of Fame. Enzo wins in singles. Enzo wins in doubles. Enzo wins in the Golden Game. Enzo wins everyone fantasy league points. Enzo wins Major League points in reality. Coach Alex Yang probably has visions of Enzo winning points when he’s dreaming at night.
Coach Frank Arias masterfully guided his Florida Crocs team to a 55-point performance this weekend, to solidify their 2nd place playoff spot.
Florida Crocs: 3-1 record. 55 total team points earned, increased their lead over 3rd place Princeton from +16 to +21 points. Grade: A. After their first net negative weekend in Chicago where they went 1-2, Florida bit back. In what is increasingly looking like a race for 2nd place in the East with Carolina running away with it, Florida reinforced their playoff hopes with wins over Portland, Seattle and Texas, only dropping a single match to Bay Area (and that itself was a highly contested Golden Game). The GG against Texas was probably their highlight of the weekend, as the ultra clutch Benjamin Brossier brought them to the brink of victory from a 16-16 tie, and then the master of the pendulum serve Mishel Levinski closed it out the tense contest at 21-18, and the chompfest began.
If you look up the definition of “locked in” in the Urban Dictionary, there’s just a picture of Daniel Gorak.
Florida MVP: Daniel Gorak. “The Florida Lock” dominated singles, winning 10 of 12 possible games (equaling Enzo’s weekend tally). The Crocs’ Song of Fire and Ice doubles pairing (ice in his veins Gorak with incandescent partner Matilda Ekholm) also took exactly 10 of 12 possible games (also equaling the Carolina record).
Shadow MVP award for the Bay Area Blasters goes to FA Angie Tan who outperformed expectations by a wide margin. The following is NOT a typo: Angie won as many GG points as her masterful doubles partner, Tao Wenzhang, and even took 2 of 3 games from Princeton in a crucial singles matchup against a dude (free agent Nishant Lebaka) that stopped the Revolution’s momentum stone cold.
Bay Area Blasters: 3-1 record. 45 total team points earned, vaulted over Seattle into 1st place (from -5 down to +14 up). Grade: A. Both Chicago and Princeton tallied more team points than Bay Area, but we are giving Bay Area the de facto bronze medal for the Crossover Event due to their more difficult strength of schedule. We expected that the Blasters would have a good showing here, with Ma “Nobody Actually Calls Me Stephen” Jinbao and the comically underrated Alexis Douin now more accustomed to the pressure-packed MLTT format and ready to perform. But it was the unexpected contributions of free agent Angie Tan that caught our eye the most, taming the MLTT spotlight which had withered so many before her, with a reserve of steely resolve most unusual for an athlete of her young age. Most impressive!
Waitaminnit, did I just see what I think I saw?!?
This is the only known still image of the moment Senura Silva won the final Golden Game point vs the Florida Crocs and dropped every jaw in the arena by performing a “Rock the Crocs Reverse Chomp.”
Like the famous image of the Loch Ness Monster, this image is not confirmed to be real and may in fact be a complete hoax. For the record, Senura now completely denies this ever happened.
Bay Area MVP Award: Ma Jinbao. We honestly don’t even think MJB is firing on all pistons yet, which is both a testament to how good he is and also a scary thought for the other teams in the league. Ma only held his own in singles, as his technical, methodical, grind-you-down style of play seems to accord more with the flow of the longer format best-of-5 or best-of-7 sets. But in this event, he seemed to find a crucial second gear in the all-important Golden Games, as he contributed an event-high 21 points won (equalled by Enzo, of course), which was a leading factor in Bay Area’s 3 wins this weekend. We’re guessing that by the next Western Division event, MJB will no longer be the Fantasy League bargain that he’s been so far.
Relocate the franchise? The last time Chicago got to celebrate like this was also in South Carolina (Myrtle Beach)…but the “Charleston Wind” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Chicago Wind: 3-1 record. 54 total team points earned, Cut into Princeton’s lead from -8 to -4. Grade: A-. With all the immense pressure after pooping their pants in front of the hometown crowd in Chicago, the Wind team arrived in Rock Hill without one of their top players Sasha Khanin, but with a helluva lot on the line and the proper mindset to start the turnaround. Credit to Coach Eric Owens and the athletes for refusing to allow what was obviously a difficult situation to affect their fighting spirit. They got solid performances from their leading man Damien Provost who, despite not faring well in singles, shined in the GG when it most mattered. Alex Cazacu was an absolute human battering ram in singles, and Daniele Pinto just continued his run for the Most Improved Player Award (is there gonna be a Most Improved Player Award awarded?). Emily Tan stepped up with her trademark relentless no-holds-barred style of play in doubles as she anchored wins in 9 of 12 games. Thunder Dan Liu and MLTT debutant Timothy Wang both had their big hero moments with critical, decisive wins.
The most heartening thing about Chicago’s performance, however, is how this team never gets down no matter what. The players seem to genuinely care about each other, and they’ve apparently circled the wagons in their support for each other. The Wind makes a distinctive sound, but in the case of this team it’s either the leonine roar accompanying a Cazacu Mister Universe bodybuilder pose, or the always-delightful celebratory cry of jubilation emanating from Tan.
Ham or Egg? Provost and Cazacu hammed and egged it to remarkable statistically equivalence this weekend.
Chicago Wind Co-MVPs: Damien Provost and Alexandru Cazacu. Our editors hate this, but we could not settle on one over the other. Provost fared poorly in singles, but made up for it with fantastic performances in both doubles and especially the GG. Cazacu was a boosted monster in singles and was also great in doubles and solid in the GG. His big 3-0 upset of Ma Jingbao would normally be a shoe-in for our MPH Upset of the Week, it just unfortunately coincided with a crazy result that we’ll discuss in part 2 of this series. There’s more than one way to skin a cat (or to catch a Croc), and perhaps this will serve as a model for Chicago going forward, to have multiple solid performances indistinguishable from each other but all resulting in W’s.
The league portrait photo op was a perfect microcosm of the entire season to date: so many moving parts to manage in a short period of time…but there suddenly appears a professional and tireless MLTT team directing operations…add an amazing group of athletes and coaches who are invested in the success of the league…sprinkle in healthy amount of good humor and comraderie, and suddenly this thing comes together very quickly. Time lapse from top photo to bottom photo was less than 3 minutes, we were in the stands with the spectators and everyone was shocked. We have requested the final official portrait from MLTT and will publish it in the next article, part 2 of this 2-part series on the Cross Division Event, coming soon. Until then, here’s your first captioned exhortation to Keep Pongin’, Pongheads!
