(by Steve Hopkins)
In their last match of the season, Ochsenhausen defeated Saarbrucken to secure the third overall position. The reward for this win – playing second-position Saarbrucken in the Final Four tournament. When the two faced off on Friday, Saarbrucken was ready. Patrick Franziska dominated Sam Kulczycki 3-0 to give Saarbrucken the 1-0 match lead. Darko Jorgic handled Simon Gauzy 3-1 to give Saarbrucken a 2-0 lead. Ochsenhausen’s Alvaro Robles easily defeated Cedric Nuytinck 3-0 to tighten the match score to 2-1. However, Patrick Franziska secured the team win by defeating Simon Gauzy 3-1. This series is best 2 of 3 home/home, so they will be moving to Ochsenhausen to play the next round.
The other Semifinal match between top-seeded Dusseldorf and fourth-seeded Muhlhausen ended pretty quickly on Saturday afternoon. Anton Kallberg topped Irvin Bertrand 3-0, Dang Qiu topped Daniel Habesohn 3-1, and Kay Stumper finished off the match with a 3-1 win over Ovidiu Ionescu. Stumper, the youngest player on Dusseldorf had the only closely contested match – where three of the games were tied at 9-9 or later. However, Stumper won two of those games – and dominated the fourth game 11-3 to log his three victories.
Ochsenhausen is operating without one of their top players (USA’s Kanak Jha) and Muhlhausen’s top two are ranked significantly below the top players of the other squads. Both Ochsenhausen and Muhlhausen may just be happy to have made the Final Four.
It seems destined that Saarbrucken and Dusseldorf will ply in the Final. That has been the case in numerous TTBL Final (and “Half Final”) events over the last three years. Dusseldorf usually holds the advantage with their deep team with Qiu and Boll and Kallberg leading the way. But Saarbrucken has stolen some matches in recent years including winning the Champions League Final just 5 weeks ago over this same Dusseldorf squad.
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