NUSELO Top 20 - Winter 23 - 2nd - Ting - podbots

NUSELO Top 20 - Winter 23 - 2nd - Ting - podbots

Treble this, treble that, treble of finals reached , ended up being only one trophy won and couldn't even win southLANder. A disappointing season for Ting, but only because of what he has achieved. At this point after everythings he’s achieved , only excellence can be expected. Rather fitting that probably the last article I ever write for University CS is a player who's from the most successful University during my tenure and by far the best player at that University; Ting, the best homegrown University CS player to never make it out, destined to be the only one who could end the NUEL Southampton agenda.

The reigning Top 20 #1 playing on what can only be deemed as a University CS super team, podbots were definitely the ones to beat. Like usual the qualification process was pretty relaxed, podbots experimented a lot with their IGL , which had varying levels of success… and had a freak huge loss to Half Natty but still went on to make all tournament playoffs and top the UKIC group stage. From the podbots camp it was just endless claims of “the treble is guaranteed” , and endless treble nonsense. Admittedly they would go on to make all three finals pretty convincingly and it did in fact look like the treble was on. Enter the bogey teams.

Podbots are a team that rarely loses major upsets, they’ll occasionally lose to teams of similar ranking to them but never lose to an adversary who is significantly below them (something that can't be claimed for all top teams ….). However, they do have a string of bogey teams, UoN Archers when retro is in good awp form, Mama P, Surrey Stags and KCL Lions.  Up until this point Ting had been very dominant and was in his usual extremely strong form. Enter the NUEL Finals , the opponents Mama P, who have routinely haunted Southampton teams. Podbots have a 1-0 map advantage coming from the UB but due to an ESEA playoffs clash they have a rather tumultuous roster. Try as Ting might to hold the pieces together they end up losing 3-2 to Mama P.

Treble cancelled. 

It would’ve been a pretty heartbreaking loss for the team and continued the endless saga of no NUEL success, but they went away , regained their mental and ended up persevering over Half Natty in the NSE finals in pretty comfortable fashion. 

Could they go on to do the double which is still a pretty rare achievement in University CS? 

No.

The UKIC Finals would be a grudge match between Archers vs Podbots , from the Archers camp they had everything to prove after countless previous losses against podbots, lower rankings, less trophies and finals. From the podbots side there wasn't much really, I guess Josh had been kicked from PL under Maza’s watch but that's about it. They’d lose map 1 but Ting would massively bounce back with a 1.53 rating on Overpass to take them to map 3, unfortunately this is where it went wrong. Playing for all the marbles, ting would unfortunately ghost the final map and podbots would end up falling short. Everything preceding you can do perfectly and be the main reason your team got to where they are , but if you fall at that final hurdle it will be all forgotten and only your failure remembered, podbots would not secure the first UKIC trophy and with that the #1 in the top 20 would fall out of reach by a whisker.

I say this season has been a failure for Ting , and it's an extremely harsh view but Ting has reached the level where that's the case. So many seasons performing at the top, the key piece in Southampton’s success and with how late this article is, his level above is shown again in the ongoing season. Very few players win a title in University CS, let alone multiple and even less are the top player in a season. On top of all that you’ve got Ting running a society, community LANs for University CS and observing as well, what can't he do? In terms of true University CS players he is so far above the rest , and with Kisynergy now progressing out of the Collegiate level you can only expect Ting will too as he really does deserve it.