The Rundown (11/22/21)
Just as the semester is winding to a close for students at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Chapel Hill PR season has come to an end. Over the past week, players have made their final pushes in the hopes of earning a spot on this season’s power rankings.
Two of UNC’s players, Spandex and ForFor, participated in Hobbescon, an invitational hosted by Hobbes2 at NC State on Saturday. Spandex won the whole thing, winning both his round robin pool and the main bracket without dropping a single set. In the process, he defeated Fantasia, Suddy, Kagura, Mister Oof, Sigtrick and Leen, along with taking three sets off of Cyphus.
ForFor similarly swept his pool, winning sets over Tony Guava, sammt, DSKA, geezer and Teesa. In the main bracket, he beat Suddy, prom queen and Fantasia, while only dropping sets to Bpop. These impressive wins landed ForFor a respectable fourth-place finish at Hobbescon.
The next day, nearly 80 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate players from all across the state flocked to the Carolina Gaming Arena for UNC’s biggest tournament of the year, Trouble iN the Triangle, or TNT. The event featured a series of crew battles between UNC, Duke and NC State. UNC’s crew solidly defeated both opposing teams without even using its best player, Sugarland. Meanwhile, NC State finished in second after winning its crew battle against Duke.
In a fitting end to his incredible breakout season, Sugarland had the best performance of all the UNC players at TNT. He made a deep run all the way to the winners side of grand finals, earning victories over MrPig, KONDE, prom queen, MINTOS, Arctinox and Struggler in the process. Sugarland ultimately finished in second place after losing a pair of sets to Frostbyte, the No. 3 player in the state.
Additionally, Arctinox earned multiple upsets on his path to fourth place. He defeated the likes of Ches, Knox, Spandex, Tony Guava and YoyoGuy while only losing to the tournament’s grand finalists. Finally, Grubbin rounded out UNC’s top-eight finishers at TNT, placing seventh after beating Suuchi, Queso, Crystal PG, Zehvor and Tony Guava.