Weekly Cups (March 17-23): Clem Bounces Back

TL.net ESPORTS

4 Posts

March 24 2025 06:39 GMT

2024-25 Off-season Community Weekly Cups
Week of March 17 - 23

by Wax

The third week for March saw Clem bounce back from a shocking winless week, with the Liquid ace claiming a double by winning both WardiTV Mondays and Monday Night Weeklies.

*Partial brackets may be shown.

March 17: WardiTV Mondays #27

Clem began his comeback by winning WardiTV Mondays, but it was hardly a walk in the park. Both Solar and MaxPax took maps off of Clem in BO3 series, and in the BO5 grand finals, underdog SKillous pushed him all the way to a fifth and final game.

SKillous had an impressive day overall, upsetting herO in the semifinals and looking solid in both of his map wins against Clem. He won a straight-up macro war against Clem on Killer's Mile (one of the TLMC 20 finalist maps replacing the trio of retro maps in the official ladder pool), and held off a peculiar 1-base all-in on Ley Lines.

However, Clem was able to take the deciding win with the help of another TLMC 20 map in Sandwyrm. An early Engineering Bay block forced SKillous to improvise on the fly, and the TL Protoss decided to risk a fast expansion at the map's debris-obstructed gold base. However, this plan B wasn't well optimized, and late mining + the shortened rush distance allowed Clem to seal the deal with a fast two-base push VOD

*****

March 17: Monday Night Weeklies #9

After fighting off a series of stiff challenges in WardiTV Mondays, Clem got his second win of the week with a more convincing run through Monday Night Weeklies. He benefited from the chaos that went on in the other half of the bracket, as both MaxPax and herO got eliminated quickly on account of PvP. The upper bracket saw Trigger take down herO and ShowTimE defeat MaxPax, which was followed by the unassuming Germany Protoss Jumy applying the coup de grace to both in the BO1 lower bracket (unfortunately for Jumy, his string of upsets was ended by ByuN).

With Clem's chief rivals gone, ByuN ended up being the biggest obstacle to Clem's victory. The aggressive Terran was the only player in the tournament to take maps off of Clem—once in the upper bracket semis and once in the grand finals—but ultimately he couldn't stop Clem from taking the weekly double (VOD).

*****

March 17: PiGosaur Cup #23

Clem called it quits with two wins in the bag, which would typically lead to a herO vs MaxPax finals showdown in the PiGosaur cup. However, while MaxPax lived up to his end of the bargain, herO missed the date after suffering a 1-2 loss against the resurgent Solar.

Solar had enjoyed some recent success in ZvP after changing to a more aggressive style, and he looked to test that approach against MaxPax in the finals as well. However, the mysterious Dane's defenses proved to be too study, and he took the final Monday cup by a 3-1 score (VOD).

*****

March 20: Kung Fu Cup 2025 #4 - SC Evo Complete Mod

Kung Fu Cup held its second weekly under the SC: Evolution Complete mod (SC2 vs BW), giving us a change of pace from the orthodox SC2 action that fills the weekly calendar. This week's victory ended up going to Classic, who took down Gerald, Dark, and Spirit on his way to the title (VOD (Korean)). Apparently, this constituted somewhat of an upset, as Dark had been considered by far the best SC:Evo player up to this point (at least according to a certain member of the mod team).

*****

March 22: Korean StarCraft League #71

The bi-weekly KSL returned for tournament #71, which saw (Wiki)

herO avoid going winless on the week by going all the way. While players like Dark and SHIN have helped maintain some degree of race variety in the KSL, this week's competition unfortunately turned into a Protoss and Terran fest as both players declined to compete (VOD).

MrIronGolem27

United States229 Posts

March 24 2025 17:44 GMT

Apparently, this constituted somewhat of an upset, as Dark had been considered by far the best SC:Evo player up to this point (at least according to a certain member of the mod team).

Don't think it was an upset, Classic's not that far behind Dark. Not to say Dark's title is undeserved (he's the winner of the last two big SC: Evo championships), just that I'd consider Classic to be one of the people close to that level.

This time, Dark recycled the same strategies against Classic once too many and Classic finally locked in his response. Fast 4 hatch on Monty Hall was punished hard by a 2 gate opener, and Classic saw 2 base Spire play on Amygdala a mile away (sniffed it out just from a lack of units being annoying on his side of the map, didn't even see Spire/Lair/gas count) and had two Stargates double pumping Corsairs before the Mutalisks reached his corner of the map.

Dark vs Classic - SEL Fall Championship
Dark vs Classic - SEL#8

It was a one-sided series, but for those following their previous matches, it's something of a satisfying note to end their rivalry in the mod on as Dark is about to head off to military service.