Bay Area Blasters

The Bay Area Blasters came into this mission with one mission: keep winning.

The home team may have entered Week 12 as the West Division’s fourth seed, but they still had a pathway to making the postseason. Not an easy pathway, though. A lot had to go the Blasters’ way for that chance to remain a realistic possibility after leaving their final homestand of the season.

And a lot went right for the Blasters this weekend.

They started their weekend with a 15-6 win over Princeton that came down to an Ultimate Golden Point on Friday. Their dominance continued with a 14-7 win over Texas on Saturday. And after defeating the defending champion Carolina Gold Rush 14-7 on Sunday, the Blasters earned their first undefeated week of Season 3.

The Blasters have Bay Area native Lily Zhang (SPINDEX: 2606) to thank for their success this week. She won all six of the games she played this weekend. She scored the final point in both of her Golden Games, which included Friday’s Ultimate Golden Point. Even when compared to a Week 6 that earned her a Player of the Week award, and a Week 7 that made her the first woman to ever top Major League Table Tennis (MLTT)’s official power rankings list, the Blasters couldn’t have asked for a better performance from their superstar this week.

“She’s rock solid, as always,” Blasters head coach Tim Wang said. “I think she’s great, and our whole team really appreciates what she does, too.”

Speaking of great performances this week, the Blasters may have found their dream doubles duo in Taehyun Kim (2735) and Baek Kwang-il (2608). The six doubles wins they earned in the nine matches they played together helped their team take all three games, which is a nice enough accomplishment on its own. But this outcome suggests that Taehyun Kim’s foot injury is no longer a blatant hindrance to his game. If the Blasters want to keep winning, they’ll need the best from the Season 2 co-MVP. And now that Kim is starting to find his groove, he could be a real problem for the Blasters’ Week 14 opponents. 

This effort not only earned the Blasters the best weekend of their season, but it may have saved their postseason chances. They now boast an 8-7 record with 159 points, which allowed them to leap ahead of the Smash and become the West Division’s third seed. With that said, earning one of the two playoff spots hasn’t gotten any easier. The Chicago Wind clinched one of those spots on Sunday, and it will be difficult for them to usurp the Portland Paddlers without a nightmare scenario coming true for the West’s top seed.

But the Blasters needed a boost more than anything, especially given their slow start to Season 3. They are getting hot at what could be just the right time, and if they make it to Championship Weekend, where they would play in front of a familiar crowd in Fremont, Calif., they will look back on Week 12 as their reason why.

“It’s an uphill battle, of course, but the team continues to show up,” Wang said. “Any little bit of luck that we can get, we’ll take it.”

Texas Smash

It hasn’t been a smooth season for the Texas Smash. Crucial absences, up-and-down weeks and even a few ill-timed injuries turned last season’s West Division champions into a team struggling to stay alive in an ultra-competitive West Division. But the Smash entered Week 12, their final week of the regular season, with a chance to earn a ticket to Fremont. All they had to do to keep that chance was to, for the umpteenth time, navigate through a litany of obstacles.

First, the Smash would be without head coach Jorg Bitzigeio on the sidelines. That’s nothing new; team captain David McBeath (2700) has taken over for Bitzigeio as acting coach all season. But there’s a wrinkle with this plan for Week 12: McBeath and his partner recently welcomed a baby girl into their family, which kept him away from the Smash’s matches as well. Fortunately, the Smash had a Plan C. They named Hiromitsu Kasahara (2726) their team captain for Week 12, thereby designating him as acting coach for the weekend. 

Second, the Smash would face the Carolina Gold Rush in their first match of the week. The same Gold Rush they lost to in the Season 2 championship match. The same Gold Rush they lost to in Week 11. But this wasn’t the same Smash team as the team in Week 11. That squad played without stars Amy Wang (2588) and Nandan Naresh (2722), which played a large part in their 1-2 finish for that week. They’d lose their rematch 5-16, but not because of Wang or Naresh. Wang finished her weekend with six of nine Singles wins and 11 Golden Game points, and Naresh ended his with four of six Singles wins and 12 Golden Game points. 

Third, they’d have to find a way to stop the bleeding from Joao Monteiro’s (2714) sudden injury. Monteiro cut his finger in the second game of the week, which ruled him out of Friday's Golden Game and Saturday’s match against the Bay Area Blasters, the latter of which they lost 7-14. 

Finally, the Smash would have to face the red-hot Princeton Revolution on Sunday and outwit head coach Mathias Habesohn, who suddenly shifted his team’s lineup just one match prior. Monteiro re-joined Naresh in Sunday’s doubles set, but his presence wasn’t enough to stop the Smash from falling to a 5-10 deficit heading into the Golden Game.

That’s when the Smash played a Golden Game they’ll forever remember. Wang took five points from Jiangshan Guo (2547). Naresh scored six points to Jinxin Wang’s (2737) two. That helped set up an Ultimate Golden Point between Kasahara and Koyo Kanamitsu (2719). After that point, Kasahara fell to the ground as his teammates mobbed their captain. A season marred by hardship, inconsistency and tumult could only end with a dramatic 11-10 win.

And with that win, the Smash ended their regular season with a 8-10 record, 184 points and a winning percentage of 0.488. That win wasn’t enough to vault them ahead of the Chicago Wind, who clinched a spot in the postseason on Sunday, but it was enough to ensure that their postseason dreams don’t end after Week 12. Those dreams are contingent on the Portland Paddlers falling at or near their Worst Case Scenario of a 0.44 winning percentage in Weeks 14 and 15, an outcome the Smash have no control over. But the Smash have found ways to control their uncontrollables all season long. Whether or not they can do so again won’t be certain until Week 14 at the earliest, but the Smash have proven that a little bit of luck can go a long way.

Princeton Revolution

Something had to change for the Princeton Revolution. The lineup they’ve deployed for weeks wasn’t working against the Bay Area Blasters on Friday. Benedek Olah (2724) couldn’t do much against Elsayed Lashin. Seungmin Cho (2789) struggled against Jinbao Ma. The dangerous doubles duo of Koyo Kanamitsu and Jinxin Wang lost 1-2 to Taehyun Kim and Baek Kwang-il. And even after Princeton crawled back in the Golden Game to force an Ultimate Golden Point, Lily Zhang silenced the Revolution and handed them a 6-15 loss.

Something had to change with this lineup. And boy, did it ever.

The Revolution submitted an unorthodox lineup prior to Saturday’s match against the Carolina Gold Rush. Kanamitsu would play in Singles 3 against Edward Ly. Jinxin Wang would face Enzo Angles in Singles 4. Olah and Cho would take their place in Doubles, and Olah wasn’t even set to touch the court in Singles. These players would have to embrace those roles in the middle of their week, before a pivotal match that could determine the top spot in the East Division.

In other words, exactly as head coach Mathias Habesohn planned it going into Saturday’s match.

“I’m always very careful with these tactical decisions,” Habesohn said. “These kinds of decisions are always coming with any dynamic.”

The changes worked. 2025 first-round draft pick Hsien Tzu Cheng (2556) swept Carolina’s Tashiya Piyadasa in her second-ever MLTT match. The brand new duo of Olah and Cho took two of three from Angles and Kai Zhang, which had been one of the most successful duos all season. And though Kanamitsu and Wang couldn’t take their Singles sets, the Revolution struck gold in the Golden Game. Cho had five points to Eugene Wang (2785)’s two. Olah had six against Angles. And when Chen scored the final point of that match, the Revolution took Saturday’s match 21-16.

“It worked out for us today,” Habesohn said after Saturday’s match. “So, I’m proud of that, and I’m happy.”

That lineup’s dominance continued in Sunday’s match against Texas, as the differently-organized Revolution entered their final Golden Game of the week with a five-point lead. They couldn’t keep it. The Smash fought back to force an Ultimate Golden Point, just as the Revolution did on Friday against the Blasters. And just like on Friday, the Revolution lost that point and finished their weekend with a 10-11 loss to the Smash.

The Revolution may have been knocked out from the East Division’s top seed, but they earned enough points to keep them in second place. As of Monday, the Revolution have a 5-7 record and 126 points with six matches left to play. Their win over Carolina on Saturday helps give them an edge over the defending champions in a tiebreaking scenario for now, a huge boon for the Revolution given the Gold Rush’s recent surge and star power. With the Revolution, Gold Rush and Slice still with very plausible pathways to a postseason spot, the East Division is still wide open. But the Revolution still find themselves in a strong position to earn one of those two playoff spots.

“Everything [in the East] is open,” Habesohn said. “And my prediction is that everything will be open until the end of the season.”

Carolina Gold Rush

Many players’ personal bests look pedestrian when Enzo Angles achieves them. That’s because many players aren’t a former MVP winner, a Major League Table Tennis (MLTT) champion, or the first-ever draft pick in league history, like Angles is.

But in Week 12, Angles proved that the league’s best players are often the ones who never stop impressing.

Three wins against Texas’ Joao Monteiro on Friday. Three wins against Princeton’s Jinxin Wang on Saturday. And if he had taken his final game against Bay Area’s Jinbao Ma on Sunday, then the former MVP would have become the fourth player in MLTT history to finish a weekend with nine wins in Singles.

But eight wins is still worthy of recognition. Three of those eight wins helped Carolina earn their 16-5 win against Texas on Friday. And even though they lost Saturday’s match against Princeton 8-13 and Sunday’s match against Bay Area 7-14, Angles’s performance will still be remembered as one of the best of Season 3.

Angles wasn’t the Gold Rush’s only star this weekend. The reigning champions welcomed back Edward Ly (2713), who made his Season 3 debut on Friday. And in his first weekend since hoisting the Season 2 championship trophy, Ly won five games against Texas’ Hiromitsu Kasahara, Princeton’s Koyo Kanamitsu and Bay Area’s Taehyun Kim while adding nine points in the Golden Game.

Another member of that championship-winning squad was Eugene Wang, who qualified for this year’s World Cup at ITTF Americas Cup San Francisco 2026, which took place in the same week as Week 11. Wang seems to perform his best in Northern California, as he finished his weekend with 12 Golden Game points and six Singles wins against Texas’ Guodong Liang (2682), Princeton’s Seungmin Cho and Bay Area’s Elsayed Lashin. 

“Eugene Wang, really, I needed him,” Gold Rush head coach Alex Yang said.

Can the defending champions make it back to Championship Weekend? They now have a record of 6-6 with 119 points after their 1-2 weekend. It doesn’t help that one of those losses was to the Revolution, another East Division competitor that now has the edge over the Gold Rush in a tiebreaker scenario. But they didn’t fall out of the running, and they still have six matches to go. And if those six matches go their way, they could be well on their way to another trophy.

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