Seems unlikely, given that this story was told from the perspective of someone mining in the pre-ASIC era. I suppose they could have invested in ASICs early on, but they started as a broke student and the reason the story is fun is because they made it work on a shoestring. "And then I bought $200,000 worth of ASICs in an overseas datacenter" doesn't have the same effect.
The problem with ASICs and FPGAs were indeed that you would have to order them some 6-12 months in advance and pay the multi-thousand cost up front.
The FPGA/ASIC manufacturers were actually using their own stock to mine the best profits and only then ship them to customers.
ASICs existed in 2013. But they wouldn't have been obtainable to a broke college student.
Probably more so by "hodling" instead of immediately selling to buy more hardware, or selling half for hardware and holding the other half to split the risk between the two option.
But it's easy to be smart after the fact...