Hugo Patino
In what turned out to be a rematch of last year’s finals, Hugo Patino defeated Pedro Piedrabuena in the finals of the 2024 United States Billiard Association National Championship.
The event was held at The Billiard House in Modesto, California on April 25th – 28th, and started with sixty one players competing in round robin twenty five point matches. With Patino and Piedrabuena finishing as the top two players in the group stages, they ended up on opposite sides of the final twenty four player bracket, with both players seeing a path to face off in the finals.
Both players took advantage of first round byes on the final board (due to their top finishes in group stages) and then both players turned in very similar looking wins in the round of sixteen. Patino defeated Kang Shin 40-22 in 37 innings, while Piedrabuena defeated Jesus Corona 40-20 in 37 innings. Both Patino and Piedrabuena averaged 1.081 points per inning.
The next two rounds saw dominating performances from both players with Patino defeating Carlos Mario Villegas and Harry Pena by identical 40-16 scorelines, and Piedrabuena beating Jim Semerci 40-6 and then 2020 National Champion Tae Kyu Lee 40-25.
Between Patino and Piedrabuena, they own seventeen USBA National Championship titles with Piedrabuena having won the event for the last three years.
The final match was described on the USBA website: “In the 24th inning in the final match it was Hugo Patino ahead 36 to 24 in 24. Pedro put together a run of 7 to close the gap to make it 36-31. Hugo answered with 2 points needing only two more, but has to sit down after a miss leaving an opening for Pedro, but Pedro misses a sensitive ticky shot! Hugo scores one, but the tension gets the best of a short angle shot as he misses to close out the match. Pedro plays into a kiss and Hugo finishes, capturing his 5th USBA National Championship title.”
In the playoff for third place, it was Tae Kyu Lee scoring a 40-38 win in 41 innings over Harry Pena.
As would be expected, Patino had the highest total average for the event, with a 1.404 Grand Average. Piedrabuena scored the events best game with 40 points in 23 innings against Semerci (1.739 average) and Tae Kyu Lee had the event’s highest run with 13 consecutive points.
Fans can watch all of the matches on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@iralee3c/streams) with English commentary or on Facebook with Spanish commentary (https://www.facebook.com/BillaronlineNewAge/). Full details from the event are available at the USBA Website at https://usba-carom.org/
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