The Blinn College esports team split a pair of matches Thursday.
The Buccaneers defeated Northeast Alabama Community College in an NJCAA Esports (NJCAAe) bout while dropping a National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) Super Smash Bros Ultimate tilt to the University of Houston-Downtown.
Blinn’s Valorant team of ,ย Samuel Long,ย Hayden Rubino,ย Camdin Sims, andย Brian Yangย earned a 2-0 victory in a best-of-three series against Northeast Alabama.
The Bucs improved to 1-0 in NJCAAe play.
Valorant is a tactical, team-based, first-person shooter set in a near-future world. Teams of five players choose unique agents with distinct abilities, combining shooting skills with strategic use of each agent’s toolkit. Teams alternate between attacking and defending. Attackers aim to plant a spike at one of the designated sites, while defenders try to prevent this or defuse the spike if planted. The first team to win 13 rounds claims victory. If both teams reach a tie at 12-12, overtime is triggered, and the match continues until one team wins by two rounds, with teams alternating between attacking and defending in each overtime round.
Blinn opened the match on the Lotus map and used its preparation and familiarity with the map to outplay Northeast Alabama.
“Our preparation paid off immediately,” Blinn assistant coach and Valorant coachย Patrick Daleyย said. “Our reads on Northeast Alabama’s setups were near perfect, and the communication across our team was sharp.
Daley said the play of Rubino was also key.
“He consistently tracked enemy rotations and opened up space for the team to capitalize,” Daley explained.
The Bucs earned a 13-6 win in the first round.
In the second round, Blinn battled Northeast Alabama on the Ascent map. Northeast Alabama raced out to a 4-1 lead, but the Bucs battled back to tie the round. Blinn eventually took an 8-4 lead into the round break and ultimately pulled away for a 13-6 win.
“In the second half, Northeast Alabama landed a couple of early attacking rounds, but it wasn’t enough to slow us down,” Daley explained. “With rifles in hand, our players elevated the pace and leaned into raw gun skill. Camdin thrived on his Phoenix, consistently breaking open sites with aggressive entries, while Samuel and Brian anchored the backline with clutch kills and trades. Once we found a rhythm, there was no stopping the push.”
Blinn continues play with a NACE match against Illinois State University at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 1.
The Buccaneers battled UH-Downtown in Super Smash Bros play but fell 2-0 in a best-of-three series.
The team ofย Gage Cole,ย Kiara Molina,ย James Rinehart, andย Braeyelyn Mitchellย competed for Blinn. The Bucs are now 0-3 in the NACE Varsity Premier league.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a crossover fighting game where players, either in one-on-one or four-on-four matches, aim to knock each other off a combat stage. The objective is for players to inflict damage to increase their opponents’ likelihood of being knocked off the platform. In singles play, each player has a set number of lives or “stocks,” and the match is won by reducing the opponent’s stocks to zero. In crew battles, teams take turns battling, with stock carryover. The team that eliminates all opposing players’ stocks first wins. Series are often best-of-three or best-of-five.
“Heading into this match, our practices focused heavily on brawler matchups, especially after last week’s lessons against Southern Mississippi,” said Daley, who also leads the Super Smash Bros squad. “We knew we’d need to sharpen our play against characters that thrive in close-range pressure, and Houston-Downtown immediately tested that work.”
Daley said Cole was a standout for the Bucs, especially in the opening round with his work with popular Pokรฉmon character Jigglypuff.
Daley also praised Molina’s effort with Samus Aran, a character from the popular Metroid game series. Molina outplayed UH-Downtown’s Link (The Legend of Zelda) to push the round into a decisive showdown.
The match ultimately came down to Cole’s Jigglypuff versus UH-Downtown’s Lucario โ another beloved Pokรฉmon character โ in a 1-on-1 battle in round two, with UH-Downtown narrowly escaping with the win.
“The team improved so much from match-to-match and set-to-set,” Daley added, “and they are looking forward to watching the footage from this matchup and improving going into our matches next week.”
The Bucs continue their Super Smash Bros season when they battle Texas A&M International University in a NACE match at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 2.
