College Esports Player Of The Week: Employee427 (UCLA)
Every week during the Spring and Fall semesters, Checkpoint On Campus will share a college esports player that we think had an amazing week. So we present College Esports Player Of The Week: Employee427 of UCLA.
Wild Mixer
The Overwatch Collegiate Championships for Spring ’21 are approaching their final stage and a ton of schools are looking to make their way into the playoffs. One such team over the week was UCLA. The Wildcard tournament pit North America’s bubble teams against each other for the final seven spots in the playoffs. Some of these squads have been a part of the national conversation but dropped off against the more dominant teams. In one of the streamed matches over the weekend, we got a look at one of the most dynamic DPS lines in College OW lead by Stanley “Employee427” Cascone.
Going up against Iowa State, UCLA made a gutsy call against meta and put Employee427 on the Phara on the opening Oasis map. Combining with Grantissimo’s flanking Iowa State hand no real answer for it. The Phara rained down so much damage before their hitscans could react. The value Employee427 was getting so much value per rocket hitting multiple enemies per shot. Because of their accuracy, Employee427 was going into nearly every team fight with Ult charge.
On the second round of the Oasis, Employee started with the Ashe and put down even more damage, completely countering ISU’s McCree. And in a big brain play, even after getting isolated, Employee427 tossed B.O.B. onto the point, securing it for UCLA. The move caught ISU out because they were off the point pushing aggressively. After that they switched back to Phara and that was all she wrote. At the end of the map Employee427 had over 10k damage and over 30% of UCLA’s eliminations.
Heading Into The Dance
The dominance continued into King’s Row. ISU started strong and actually completed the map. But on offense, Employee got back onto Phara and washed everyone on their first push. While Yaboijohnny and Grantissimo flanked UCLA got their star DPS to pop off once more. After some disgusting shatters and flaks, UCLA completed the map as well, taking the match to overtime.
Because of their superior time bank, UCLA had to defend in OT. The UCLA supports stepped up and full held ISU. So for the final round all the Bruins had to do was get one tick on the capture point. So Employee427 and UCLA pulled out the Bastion/Sym teleport trick. They evaporated ISU and ended up winning the match.
With the win UCLA secured a wildcard spot in the national playoffs. Where they will face title hopefuls, HU Storm. Perhaps, the Bruins can pull out more crazy comps and catch HU off guard. But either way watch out for our College Esports Player Of The Week: Employee427