Esports 4/10/2026 10:56:00 PM

Blinn esports Call of Duty team falls in CCL West Regional Playoffs

The Buccaneers dropped matches to Arizona and Cal State-Fullerton

Esports 4/10/2026 10:56:00 PM

Blinn esports Call of Duty team falls in CCL West Regional Playoffs

The Buccaneers dropped matches to Arizona and Cal State-Fullerton

The Blinn College esports Call of Duty team saw its postseason run come to a close with back-to-back losses in the Collegiate Call of Duty (CCL) West Regional Playoffs on Friday.

The Buccaneers fell to the University of Arizona 3-1 in a best-of-three round one match before dropping a 3-0 decision to California State University-Fullerton in consolation play.

Jaden Navarro, Aariz Ali, Daniel Gonzalez, and Pablo Tarazaga competed for Blinn.

Friday's matchups saw teams attempting to collect three wins across three modes of play in the first-person-shooter game:

Hardpoint: Teams secure rotating capture points, earning points for control. A team wins by reaching 250 points first.
Search and Destroy: Teams alternate attacking and defending, with the goal to plant or defuse an objective. The first team to win six rounds claims victory.
Overload: Teams placed on separate areas on a map compete to capture an Overload Device and transport it to one of two detonation zones on the opposing team's area. The match ends when either team scores eight points.

Blinn entered the postseason as the No. 20 seed and opened against 13th-seeded Arizona. The Buccaneers showed early promise in round one, highlighted by strong play on select Hardpoint rotations, but ultimately fell 250-156.

Blinn responded in round two Search and Destroy with a decisive performance. Key opening eliminations from Ali and Navarro, along with coordinated teamwork from Gonzalez and Tarazaga, helped the Buccaneers surge to a 6-2 victory to even the match.

Round three proved pivotal as Arizona broke a scoreless deadlock late to secure a 1-0 win in Overload. The Wildcats carried that momentum into the final Hardpoint round, where Blinn was unable to match Arizona's pace in a 250-113 loss that ended the series.

In consolation play, Blinn faced seventh-seeded California State University-Fullerton but struggled to find consistency. The Buccaneers dropped the opening Hardpoint round 250-183 before falling 6-2 in Search and Destroy.

Blinn appeared poised to extend the match in Overload, earning a late capture for a 1-0 lead, but Fullerton responded with back-to-back scores to secure a 2-1 win and complete the sweep.

"We came in expecting to make a run despite our seed, and we showed flashes of that, especially in Search and Destroy against Arizona," Blinn assistant coach and Call of Duty coach Ryan Lucich said. "There were moments where our teamwork and execution were exactly where they needed to be, but we also had stretches where small mistakes added up and cost us."

Despite the early exit, Lucich said the experience will serve as motivation moving forward.

"This is obviously a disappointing result," he added," but we'll take what we learned and apply it to our upcoming NJCAAe playoff run."

Print Friendly Version

Players Mentioned

Aariz Ali: Sophomore; Call of Duty

Jaden Navarro: Freshman; Call of Duty

Daniel Gonzalez: Freshman; Call of Duty

Players Mentioned

Aariz Ali
: Sophomore; Call of Duty

Jaden Navarro
: Freshman; Call of Duty

Daniel Gonzalez
: Freshman; Call of Duty