NCTTA Team Preliminaries in Review
By Brayden Glad
NCTTA Media Committee
In the first round of competition, the underdogs provided a few surprises, the biggest being #22 UCLA overcoming #9 Maryland 3-1. Close matches included #4 Northwestern and #8 Washington needing doubles to overcome #16 Texas A&M and #20 Massachusetts, respectively. #18 Carnegie Mellon received a difficult introduction to the NCTTA nationals, losing to #6 California 4-0 in their first-ever match.
Continuing onward, the opening matches for Group 5 and the first set of women’s team matches went to form, with only #5 USC- #17 UNC-Charlotte providing intrigue. Unfortunately, a roster mismanagement led to USC defaulting the deciding doubles match, and giving debutants UNCC its first ever NCTTA nationals win 3-2. The #5 Texas and #3 MIT women’s teams needed doubles to defeat #13 Boston University and #11 Texas A&M respectively.
UCLA remains the underdog story of the tournament, defeating #14 UT-Dallas 3-1 to qualify for the next round.
Group 5 continued to provide drama, with #21 Washington University at Saint Louis upsetting UNC-Charlotte 3-1 and breaking the group wide open. Coupled with USC’s 3-1 win over the shorthanded #10 Rutgers, every team in that group stood at 1-1 with all to be decided in the 3rd match.
While the upsets by #22 UCLA removed any drama from Group 2, in the other groups little was decided going into the final game. The Yale-Michigan #12-13 showdown for advancement from group 1 was delayed by almost an hour by the MIT-Syracuse marathon, and also went to doubles, where Michigan advanced with #1 Indiana. NYU easily defeated UCLA and won Group 2.
All and all the day was for upsets, cheers and jubilation as the unexpected is now very much in the thick of things!
About 2022 NCTTA College Table Tennis Championships
The championships are hosted by the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association and the Round Rock CVB. Men’s and Women’s Singles and Doubles, and Men’s/Coed Teams, Women’s Teams. The event is sponsored by Double Happiness, Double Fish and Joola.
Watch the event on live stream starting Friday April 8th on champs.nctta.org
About NCTTA
The National Collegiate Table Tennis Association (NCTTA) is a non-profit organization established exclusively for promoting the sport of table tennis at the college level. As the national governing body for college table tennis in the United States and Canada, NCTTA organizes elite intercollegiate competition throughout North America. www.nctta.org