UCLA Smash Melee Eliminated in California Regional Qualifier
- Josh Limon
- Feb 18, 2018
- 2 min read
UCLA has been eliminated from this Collegiate Star League season after being defeated by University of California San Diego at the California region playoffs. The full VoD of the event is available here. Author's note that the VoD will expire after 2 weeks.
UCLA Smash Melee traveled to San Luis Obispo last Saturday to fight other California universities for a chance to progress to nationals. The Bruins’ roster consisted of Tai “Tri” Nguyen, Albert “zbert” Zheng, Saef “Slap” Iftikhar, Mitchell “Tonkatsu” Lee and Chris “Zhura” Zhu. The qualifier rounds were fought in a crew battle single elimination tournament style.
UCLA played their first match against University of California Santa Cruz and the team was unsure how they would perform. Some players were nervous while others felt confident in the team’s ability to take them down. UCLA was seeded lower than UCSC and was not the expected winner.
Chris “Zhura” Zhu was the star for the Bruins this match as he led the charge on his Fox, taking a whopping seven stocks off of UCSC to begin the match. Slap’s Sheik and Tri’s Fox then went on and took three and four stocks respectively to maintain the lead. Finally, Zheng's Fox and Lee's Peach struck the final blow, eliminating UCSC in the quarterfinals.
After their first match, the Bruins practiced for four hours until their next match against the UC San Diego Tritons. UCLA has had a inconsistent performance against UCSD, as they won a game and lost a game to the Tritons in the SoCal qualifiers. UCLA practiced so much before the match that players became fatigued and it affected the team’s morale. Nguyen noted that he “just wanted to get [the match] over with.”
The Bruins struggled at the beginning of the match, as UCSD’s "Mojoe", a player currently ranked 20th on the SoCal ladder and one of the best Fox's in the region, took eleven of UCLA’s stocks by himself. After single-handedly defeating UCLA Zhu in a Fox mirror and Lee's Peach, Mojoe was finally eliminated by Nguyen's Fox, taking him down to his final stock. With only one stock remaining, Nguyen was then quickly eliminated by UCSD’s Blue, a Jigglypuff player. UCLA’s remaining players, Zheng and Saef “Slap” Iftikhar put up a fight but ultimately lost to UCSD, who won with eight leftover stocks.
With their loss to UCSD, UCLA’s Melee Team is eliminated from the CSL season. The team fought well this season with a record of 2-2 despite their defeat against UCSD, California’s number one collegiate Smash team. They walk away from Regionals with a 3rd place finish of all schools in the SoCal region.
Good job to the players on representing UCLA and we wish them good luck in future seasons. Go Bruins!
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