PONG BOMB! LEAKED PIC OF WESTERN DIVISION TEAM ROSTERS IN ADVANCE OF TONIGHT’S COMPETITION REVEALS TEAM LINEUPS
Advance pic of the program cover for tonight’s inaugural MLTT Western Division event. But will all the players pictured above be there? Read on to discover Majorponghead’s scoop on who’s there, and who’s not!
September 22, 2023. In our previous article when we stated that we weren’t sending a reporter to this weekend’s inaugural Western Division competition at the Kaiser Permanente Arena (Santa Cruz, CA….get your tickets HERE), we purposefully didn’t mention anything about our plans to insert a west coast undercover operative. Yes, while the rest of the Majorponghead staff is prepping the office for a huge live streaming watch party that starts tonight 5pm PT/8pm EST on MLTT’s Youtube site, management has secretly arranged for infiltration at the playing site! That bit of subterfuge has now paid huge dividends as this operative was just now able to wait until a hard-working MLTT official left his computer for a coffee break, then stealthily sneak down from the stands and take a paparazzi-style photo of the team rosters submitted by coaches. Here’s the image we just received:
Our west coast operative risked life and limb to take this pic of this weekend’s team rosters. We have redacted all other information on the MLTT’s official’s computer screen for the protection of the officials and players.
So obviously there is some big news here. Texas Smash has shown up in force, with ALL of their top guns ready to go. The Portland Paddlers have virtually their best lineup, with only #5 Daniel Tran not present (but with the very capable Isaac Vila Ortiz stepping into his Butterfly Lezolines). The Seattle Spinners seem to be in decent shape, but they will be missing their #3 guy, African Champion Olajide Omotayo, which could prove to be crucial. Johan Hagberg, an intriguing lefty from Sweden, will be taking his place but effectively this pushes both Andrew Cao and Paul Zhenyu Qi up a spot in the rotation. All that said, the biggest news here is that the Bay Area Blasters will be without the services of their #2 pick, Ma Jinbao. Furthermore, it seems that since they’ve picked up Angie Tan as a free agent, Lily Zhang will not be available for all three matches…in fact our operative has heard from several players that Lily will only be playing one match. All of this puts Coach Maggie Tian in a bit of a rough spot, similar to what Princeton Revolution Coach Mathias Habesohn faced this past weekend when he was without the services of Jishan Liang and Edward Ly. We all know how that turned out.
So while we at Majorponghead haven’t exactly had a great track record so far in the prediction business, we’re going to go ahead and risk eating our last remaining uneaten foot and predict that Seattle and Texas are gonna battle it out for top honors this weekend. We’ll give the slight edge to Texas, with a tip of the 10-gallon hat to newly crowned Pan Am Champ Amy Wang (now ranked World #31), but would not be surprised if Seattle’s youth movement makes a strong showing, it’s that close. When you’ve got both young superstars Nikhil Kumar and Aditya Sareen (World #39) at the top of your lineup, Coach Luba….unleash the fury and let the kids play! We’ve got Portland’s top-heavy lineup battling the hamstrung Bay Area Blasters for third, and while you can basically pencil in win after win all weekend for Portland’s Jiwei Xia and the mighty Kou Lei, we also see the Blasters’ Lashin Elsayed playing the hero’s role for his team. This is also gonna be tight, but we’ll go on the record for Portland taking the bronze despite the back of their rotation being somewhat exposed. That said, with our past record in making predictions, Coach Maggie Tian should be dancing a jig right now cause we’ve likely just given her the secret sauce to coach her short-staffed squad to upset wins and to shock the world. After all, with the ecstasy and agony that is the Golden Game, in the immortal words of Kevin Garnett, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!
Coach Maggie Tian’s Bay Area Blasters will be missing the services of their #2 pick, Jinbao Ma, for the entire opening weekend, and Lily Zhang will reportedly only be available for one match.
The undercover operative’s photo also reveals the schedule for the weekend. Portland vs Seattle kick things off tonight, and the late match is Texas vs Bay Area. If our predictions are correct, then we’ll see two 1-0 teams playing two 0-1 teams on Saturday, with both winning teams pushing their records to 2-0 and thereby setting up a very dramatic 1pm PT/4PM EST match on Sunday of two undefeated squads, Seattle and Texas, facing off for bragging rights and first place after the first week of action. T-minus 8 hours until the action begins, and we literally cannot sit still from the excitement! Keep on ponging, pongheads.
