UCSD StarCraft (6-2) played against Rochester University (7-1) in the fifth week of the Tespa Collegiate Season, a Swiss collegiate StarCraft 2 tournament. Rochester University features three players in Grandmaster League, a rank only the top 200 players in the North America region have the privilege of holding. UCSD StarCraft also holds similar distinction, with Joshua “Flume” Chan and Kailash “Liqht” Jayaram holding Grandmaster status recently.

Game 1 featured UCSD’s Cameron “TeaDragon” Wang against Rochester’s “psmoonsun”. Wang, looking to upset strong opposition, utilized a tricky strategy rushing the Nydus Worm--a building that allows quick teleportation of units within enemy lines. This high risk strategy can be extremely potent if the opponent is caught off guard. Unfortunately for Wang, psmoonsun managed to discover Wang’s strategy and prepared a strong defense to shut down Wang’s chances of an upset.

Down 0-1, UCSD’s Chan was in a must-win situation against Rochester’s “Quas” to remain in the series. The game started off extremely normal, with both players doing standard openings. At five minutes, Chan opted to attack at an unusual timing caught Quas off guard. Quas, busy spending his resources advancing his tech tree, didn’t have the resources to defend Chan’s attack, unexpectedly ending the game in under six minutes.

UCSD’s Chan (Red) overwhelms Quas’s (Blue) Defense

Tied 1-1, Jayaram was tasked to close out the series against Rochester’s “Disrespect”. Similarly to game 2, both players started off with standard builds until 5 minutes, when Jayaram started preparing for a huge attack utilizing the Nydus Worm. When Disrespect moved his army across the map to attack, Jayaram attacked with the Nydus Worm, catching Disrespect completely off guard. Jayaram would deal game ending damage that completed UCSD’s comeback 2-1 win.