East Division teams, meet your new overlords: the … Florida Crocs?

The same Florida Crocs that only won four matches last season? The same Crocs that scored just 131 points in Season 3, the lowest in all of Major League Table Tennis (MLTT) by 24 points? The same Crocs that would enter their first weekend of Season 4 with mostly last season’s roster?

Yes, those very same Florida Crocs. Those same Crocs have nearly matched their Season 3 win total in their first week of Season 4 action. Those same Crocs now have the most points in the East Division with 38. And those same Crocs earned the second undefeated weekend of Season 4 with four players from last year’s roster.

“[The] Crocs have, since league inception, made it clear that even under the toughest situations we will put up a fight,”  Crocs coach Frank Arias said after the weekend ended. “I believe this season won’t be any different than that.”

That doesn’t mean the changes didn’t help. Anyone who anticipated facing the same old Crocs from Season 3 couldn’t have expected this kind of production from Jishan Liang (SPINDEX: 2737), the 23rd pick in the Season 4 MLTT Draft. He opened Friday’s 14-7 win against the Texas Smash with two wins over Hiromitsu Kasahara (2747). His dominance carried into Saturday’s Golden Game with an 8-0 shutout over Atlanta’s Jiwei Xia (2607) to cap off a 12-9 victory. And when Liang took the table against the New York Slice, his former team, he took two from Kaden Xu (2676) in Singles 1 and four Golden Game points from Koki Niwa (2789) to take another 12-9 win for the Crocs.

Just as impressive was free agent Andrea Todorovic (2532), who joined the Crocs as a free agent ahead of Week 3. Someone had to face Texas superstar Amy Wang on Friday, and the Crocs are happy it was Todorovic, who took two games from her on Friday. That victory gave her momentum heading into Saturday’s match against the Atlanta Blazers, the team she spent Season 3 with. And after two Singles wins and four Golden Game points against Jessica Reyes-Lai (2414), she helped the Crocs take down her former squad.

“Since the day that we arrived into Westchester,” Arias said, “We all tried to make [Todorovic] feel like she was part of the team since the beginning and boost her confidence, and the results were there.”

That doesn’t even mention the two match-winning points Todorovic competed in: the first against Reyes-Lai on Saturday, and the second against New York’s He Li (2629) on Sunday after an Ultimate Golden Point. Just a couple of wrong bounces could have sent the Crocs home with a 1-2 record, but Todorovic held steady to secure these pivotal points.

Those close Golden Games do insinuate an important caveat to the Crocs’ wins this season: none of them were pretty. The Crocs won two of those matches by only three points, and they secured each of their Golden Games by five points or less. They should still be celebrating those wins, though. There’s no better gift for birthday boys Marc Duran (2608) and Daniel Gorak (2629) than an undefeated weekend, especially without third overall pick Omar Assar (2880) with them.

This weekend belonged to the Crocs, no matter how they got there. And if Assar can lift this team even higher than where they are now, there’s no telling how far the Crocs can go this season. 

But maybe they don’t need any extra help to become one of the East Division’s most dominant teams.

“I’m extremely proud of each one of the players,” Arias said. “They all stepped up when needed and each one played with one only goal: team victory.”
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Don’t Mess with Texas

Paul Drinkhall knows table tennis better than most of his fellow countrymen. He’s a three-time Olympian and a seven-time English Champion, and he’s earned his reputation as one of the greatest table tennis players to ever come out of England. His next task: prove his table tennis acumen across the Atlantic Ocean, but not as a player. As coach of the Texas Smash, a historically dominant team that missed the postseason for the first time last year.

Retooling and providing consistent coaching to a struggling team is no easy feat, but Drinkhall passed his first test with flying colors. Well, not the very first one, as his MLTT coaching debut ended with a 7-14 loss to the Florida Crocs on Friday. But the Smash decided they were done losing after that, finishing the weekend with a 14-7 win against the New York Slice on Saturday and a 17-4 domination of the Atlanta Blazers on Sunday.

Most of the Smash’s mainstays were just as dominant as they’ve always been, if not better. Drinkhall’s coaching seemed to have helped former acting coach David McBeath (2774) focus at the table, as the Smash’s captain finished with 12 Golden points and six Singles wins over Marc Duran, Mohamed El Beialy (2660) and Woojin Kim (2710). Nandan Naresh (2808) and Hiromitsu Kasahara also contributed six Singles wins, each taking on some of the league’s toughest players. 

That didn’t stop the Smash’s newest players from making dominant first impressions. Anastasiia Kolish (2549) showed why Drinkhall selected her with the 18th pick in the Season 4 MLTT Draft with four Singles wins in just six games against Jessica Reyes-Lai and He Li. She’s not the only new Texan to have performed well in a small sample size in Singles, as Senura Silva showed out with three Doubles wins and a team-leading 14 points in the Golden Game.

Whether or not the Smash will make a postseason appearance won’t be certain for at least another few months. But if the Smash’s 38 points and 2-1 record from this weekend is a sign of things to come, they’re in an incredible position to do so. Sure, they’re only three points ahead of the Los Angeles Spinners for second place in the West Division, but they’re just 10 behind the Bay Area Blasters for the top spot. They’ve been in this exact scenario before, and they know from their downfall in Season 3 that consistency is what keeps teams afloat as the weeks pass. All they need to do is maintain this pace going forward, and Drinkhall’s crew should have a clear pathway to the postseason.

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What to Make of the Atlanta Blazers?

The Atlanta Blazers are unquestionably having a better start to Season 4 than they did in Season 3. A 2-4 record looks better than a 1-5 record after six matches, and growth of any kind should be the primary goal for one of MLTT’s newest teams. 

With that said, is this enough growth for the Blazers?

 Yes, the Blazers finished with the second-worst record in all of MLTT last year. But they have the talent to become one of the league’s most dangerous teams. They have two back-to-back No. 1 overall picks, Yuya Oshima (2747) and Quadri Aruna (2786). They have some of the sport’s most under-the-radar threats, including Kayama Yu (2820), Tom Feng (2657), and 22nd overall pick Woojin Kim, as well as American stars Rachel Sung (2505) and Jessica Reyes-Lai shoring up Singles 2. Coach Koji Itagaki has one of the league’s most illustrious coaching resumes, which includes two bronze medals with Table Tennis Bundesliga’s TSV Bad Königshofen in 2024 and 2025. Should a roster with that much firepower have two wins so far?

The Blazers have some valid justifications for their 39% winning rate so far, as Oshima, Kayama and Feng have all missed weekends this season. They even have genuine reasons to believe their slow start is just that, such as Aruna’s improvement and Kim’s emergence as a star. And yet, this weekend looked awfully similar to their Week 1. They started with a 14-7 win against the New York Slice on Friday, only to fall to the Florida Crocs 9-12 on Saturday and face a 4-17 annihilation on Sunday at the hands of the Texas Smash. Consistency is important, but the Blazers should not be consistently ending weekends with more losses than wins.

They’re also consistent in showing flashes of sheer dominance. Kim’s seven Singles wins tied for the most of Week 3. Kayama led all players with 19 points in the Golden Game, with Aruna trailing close behind at 16. There are so many reasons to believe in the Blazers, and they put those reasons on full display this week through fleeting, yet exceptional moments.

Can the Blazers earn a postseason berth purely off of flashes? They’re comfortably the third-seeded team in the East Division as of now, with not enough room to move around at the moment. They can still end the season with a ticket to Championship Weekend, but only if they prove that one-win weekends are their floor, instead of their ceiling.
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An Unpleasant Time in Pleasantville

It’s time to address the Statue of Liberty-sized elephant in the room with a couple of stats:

• There have only been two winless weekends so far this season, out of a possible 12. The New York Slice have earned both.

• Only one other MLTT team has zero wins so far this season. That team is the Carolina Gold Rush, who haven’t played a single game this season.

• The New York Slice have competed in six matches this season. That’s one-third of the total matches they’ve played this season.

Yes, it is officially time for the New York Slice to start panicking.

The winless Slice aren’t even a train wreck. They have just one more point than the Texas Smash, the current second-seed in the West Division. They have the highest Doubles percentage in the East Division (66.7%), which ties the Bay Area Blasters and Chicago Wind for the best in the league. Some of the sport’s most talented stars wear their colors, including Koki Niwa, He Li and even head coach Adam Hugh. This wasn’t a team expected to bottom out. This was a team with postseason ambitions, a team that was a few bounces away from earning a spot last season.

The Slice even had several positive takeaways from this weekend. Li made the best first impression of any player making their Season 4 debut this week, tying Atlanta’s Woojin Kim for most Singles wins with seven. Kaden Xu took 15 Golden Game points, and Niwa added 13 of his own. They even fought to the very end, having lost each Golden Game by a combined seven points. With those seven points, they would have won all three games in front of their home crowd. Instead, they left Westchester Table Tennis Center as the team with the league’s most dire situation.

It’s one thing to lose all three matches for the second straight time. It’s another thing to do so at Westchester Table Tennis Center. Their home court. The same building they were in when they came back against the Los Angeles Spinners after forcing an Ultimate Golden Point in Week 5 of Season 3 on Slice star Jishan Liang’s birthday. As fate would have it, the Slice would find themselves in another Ultimate Golden Point inside this stadium, but not one to remember. The Slice lost that point on Sunday. To Liang’s own Florida Crocs. The same Florida Crocs that finished Week 3 undefeated, while the Slice still have yet to earn a single win.

Somehow, hope is not lost for the Slice this season. MLTT is a points-based game, and they have the second-most points of any team in the East Division. If a few Golden Game points went in their direction, they could be in playoff position now. But time is running out for the Slice to make up for the lost matches. They’re one of just three teams to have competed during two weekends already, meaning they have fewer matches left to play than most of their rivals. Fewer matches means less room for error, which the Slice cannot afford for the rest of this season. They have to make the most of all four of their remaining weekends to have a chance at sniffing the playoffs. If even one of those weekends goes awry, the Slice could easily be looking at another early exit.

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