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Cal/UC Berkeley Golden Bears win the Heroes of The Storm (Dorm) on National TV

Cal being good at eSports is not a surprise. Having such victory on national TV is a bit of one.

By Ruey Yen
Oski is certainly happy that there is a new group of National Champions on campus.
Oski is certainly happy that there is a new group of National Champions on campus.
Ethan Miller/Getty Images

In case you missed all the Twitter excitement from this evening, there are a new group of National Champions on campus and they are the Cal eSports team.

(Yes, that's one of the player' mother that's also on the stage - no doubt joyous for his son to not have to earn this scholarship.)

In a thrilling (and I say this in all seriousness) game 5 victory that saw the Bears having to withstand two ASU Dragon Knights (huge advantage like a power play), the Bears pulled off a come from behind victory to win the team free tuition for the rest of their collegiate career.

This was the crowning moment:

And the eSports athletes that brought the glory back to Berkeley.

Heroes of The Storm is a new game from Blizzard (the folks who made Starcraft and World of Warcraft) that is still in Beta. In a way to popularize this new game, in addition to how the novelty of this tournament lies in how the game has not yet been solved by overplaying, they managed to get ESPN2 to broadcast the grand finale (against Sunday Night Baseball and NBA Playoffs).

Out of some 200+ teams, the "UC Berkeley Golden Bears" and the "ASU Dream Team" (be proud of your school's mascot, guys) were in this grand finale.

Each game is a 5 vs. 5 player matchup. It starts with the two team drafting "heroes" via a snake draft format.

Bears took the 1st game. ASU as the loser of the previous game got to select the map for the 2nd game. The key things to HOTS is that each map has a way different set of objectives. Denying the Bears of a 1972 Miami Dolphins-like undefeated run, ASU (who apparently had only 1 loss before the final) took game 2. Bears came back with game 3 before ASU picked a very new map (Sky Temple) and took game 4. In the deciding game 5, the Bears chose "Dragon's Shrine" which involved more team fighting (one of the Bears' main strength given their teamwork).

Just when things were looking dire for the Bears, a desperate team defensive that was also key to the game 3 pivotal allowed the Golden Bears to stay in the game and eventually earn them this great honor.

YOU KNOW IT, YOU TELL THE STORY, YOU TELL THE WHOLE WIDE WEB THIS IS BEAR TERRITORY!

So that's yet another National Title for our proud alma mater.

Of course...

Valiant effort to the ASU team, who appears to be nearly every bit as good as the Cal squad.

Should eSports really become a regular thing on the ESPN networks (they did use to have that show about people playing Madden 10 years ago), this may be the turning point.

GO BEARS!

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