G2 take an early flight home as Spirit shocked by 1win - ESL Pro League S24
Are G2 serious?
We wanted to write about Spirit as the main story, but we're just so baffled and disappointed by G2 that we have no choice but to put them first. They lost to PARIVISION to leave EPL S24 in a 1-3 fashion.
When even HeavyGod, who has been as reliable as a player can realistically be for a year, is having a day nearly as bad as poor asap, you know you're down the creek without a paddle. r1nkle started quite well on G2, but cracks are appearing with his decision making, and some of his bizarre choices in clutches are costing G2 in important rounds.
PARIVISION are not a terrible team and they can punish you - they will grind the game out, make it difficult, make every round close, but they're eminently beatable if you're a top team. You shouldn't be losing to them in an elimination game as a top 10 team. It's that simple.
And yet.
If r1nkle is a mechanical demon who struggles with decision making, he was given a lesson by the player who is the absolute opposite. He was completely schooled by Jame, who just let G2 walk into him time and time again, giving them the rope and letting them trip themselves up with it.
He dropped a 24-9 scoreline in a 24 round game, which sums him up perfectly, on Inferno to close out the series and send G2 home early, after PARIVISION smacked 'em around on Ancient.
It definitely wasn't a whitewash - it was tight to the end, but that's what PARIVISION want. Your job is to not let them, but G2 failed. In nearly every sense of the word.
Let's talk about Spirit losing to 1win, then.
nafany has been waiting for months to see sh1ro again. He was desperate for this win - it was obvious in his reaction, but also in the way 1win played. They knew what Spirit were going to do before magixx did, and 1win ran them ragged all over the map. donk couldn't get going again, which has to be a concern, but a lot of it appears to be a lack of preparation.
Even the casters mentioned how underprepared Spirit looked at times.
They were terrible all game; their stars looked off, their calling non-existent and their CT sides embarrassing. If they play like that again tomorrow, they will be going home.
On the positive side, it was lovely to see Ax1Le in great nick again, even if it did give us Vietnam-style flashbacks to COVID 19 lockdowns. He was everywhere, backed up by BELCHONOKK who turned into the best player in the world on T side Cache and CT side Anubis, racking up multikills when they were desperately needed.
And for ArtFr0st, it was redemption for the time he was kicked for sh1ro all those years ago.
He died just ten times all series long, largely because 1win won 17 of 24 T rounds, and he was just chilling in the back while Ax1Le and BELCHONOKK killed everyone. Of course, he got stuck in, but he won't have a lower cortisol game all tournament.
Aurora pulled off the reverse sweep over FURIA to fully cement the idea that they are now ready to take their spot in the top five.
They've been on an excellent run of late, with Jimpphat crushing it, but this was a win powered by Wicadia mostly. He was terrific on both Mirage and Nuke - Aurora's two map wins - with XANTARES quietly impactful. It was back to what made this team good in the first place, which is encouraging, and gives them multiple different win conditions. This team with XANTARES and Wicadia really on it is a genuine top five team.
9z 2-0'd BetBoom in convincing fashion, with HUASOPEEK once more pulling off some very silly plays. He's one of the more fun players in the world to watch when he's on his day, and this was his day. We love watching that guy.
luchov has been up and down, but more games like that and we're all in. His start of the year was bonkers.
M80 stayed alive pretty undeservedly, in our eyes, given how poor they were against a Legacy team with a stand-in. At one point, Legacy's analyst was outfragging all three Americans on Mirage. It was awful. M80 were 7-2 up on the second map, cruising to a 2-0, and managed to lose handily from there on out.
Again, Legacy had their analyst playing.
They've looked mediocre in both wins - just a sheer lack of firepower - and we'd be very surprised should they beat any of the other teams remaining in the competition.
Falcons soar to the playoffs, showing up in a way we've been hoping to see.
NiKo and co. made life extremely difficult for NAVI in this series. From map one the Bosnian was absolutely on it. While he didn't have an extraordinary amount of kills relative to his team, he was doing everything right. When he does that and Falcons has no obvious straggler, they're almost impossible to beat.
It's just a shame they can't do it consistently, map two being a prime example.
The only player on Falcons who had even a remotely good map on Anubis was TeSeS. Meanwhile on the NAVI side, makazze was life gaming, dropping 31 with w0nderful on 28. But even that was only good enough for an overtime win. On a map where Falcons basically didn't show up individually and NAVI had two stars.
It's no shock then that map three was Falcons'.
NiKo went Super Saiyan on this map, and everything he did on Inferno was exceptional. This dude was 26-10 in 21 rounds. That's utterly insane. His rating was 2.12. A deep two. On LAN.
Thanks to him, Falcons won 13-8, closing the series 2-1 and rounding out our day.
