UCLA Overwatch Drops Series Against ASU, Lose Perfect Record in PACG
- Vincent Tay
- Apr 6, 2018
- 2 min read
UCLA played Arizona State University, their biggest rival in the PACG tournament, on March 13 and broke their perfect record in the Overwatch Tournament.
Overwatch Team A prepared for the match but their practice did not give them an edge coming into the series. “We scrimmed a few times and fixed our team compositions a bit but in the actual game, the differences in individual and team skill was too high,” said DPS player Brad “raxa” Jiang.
Though the score 4-0 in ASU’s favor suggest the Bruins were swept in the series, UCLA was close to winning the first two maps, King’s Row and Temple of Anubis. Brian “Pip” Sou shut down several of ASU’s pushes on King’s Row with several key concussion mine and Rip-tire kills. UCLA’s defense was finally broken when ASU’s tank player, Chronodota, managed to get behind UCLA’s shields and land multiple Earthshatters on the team.
Jiang’s performance on Widowmaker and McCree on Temple of Anubis was remarkable, as his eliminations allowed the Bruins to capture the first point faster than ASU. His play was also responsible for pushing the team into the first tiebreaker map in the series on Temple of Anubis.
UCLA’s weakness is their lack of a Tracer specialist on the team. Jiang and Sou attempted to flex onto Tracer, but the team was unable to comfortably run team compositions with her in it.
UCLA’s unfamiliarity with Tracer was noticeable on the series last two maps, Ilios and Route 66, where Tracer’s mobility reigns supreme. ASU’s star DPS players, Chumcha1 and Amadien, exploited this weakness in UCLA’s team composition, as Amadien’s expertise on Tracer allowed him to clean up Chumcha1’s kills on a variety of heros.
Despite this weakness, Jiang is not worried because he said the team likes to play to its strengths. “It isn’t a problem unless we are playing a very strong team. Dive isn’t our strong suite anyways.”
The Bruins hope to come back stronger in their next PACG games with the guidance from a new team coach, Emmy “Swablu” Cao. Her expertise is expected to coach UCLA on new team compositions it should run and allow the Bruins to better analyze their performance to improve. “Hopefully (with Swablu) we’ll start running team compositions that make sense on each map,” said Jiang.
Cao’s first task will be to prepare the team for the upcoming rivalry match between UCLA and University of Southern California this Saturday. Although UCLA seems to be the stronger team based on the standings, USC’s past performance shows that they will not lose without putting up a fight.
The Bruins seemed pretty confident they would crush their rivals. Noah “AnotherDax” Malloy said, “GGEZ,” in regards to their expected performance against USC. UCLA will play USC on LAN at USC’s campus Seeley G. Mudd Building 123. Tickets and bus rides are free and available on the Esports @ UCLA’s Facebook event page.
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