MOUZ suffer the ignominy of a last placed exit

It's been a long time since MOUZ have had this bad a placement - in fact, it's the first time they've had a group stage exit with Spinx in the team.

They've had a reputation of being flat track bullies and group stage warriors, both of which have been shattered by yesterday's loss to 9z.

This did not in any way look like a MOUZ performance, as they were at best even in most of these maps and at worst outshot, outthought and outplayed. 9z have always been a tricky team to face but this is not the 9z we've held up as a potential underdog to watch.

One only has to look at how luchov performed against Vitality - which included a 3-15 map - and then against MOUZ to conclude that something has gone horribly wrong, and it seems this roster has become untenable now with most pointing the finger at Brollan.

Only one thing this is certain; this was not the MOUZ most love to hate.

Things are only going marginally better for Spirit, who were soundly beaten by PARIVISION in what can only be described as a pathetic showing from everyone but donk.

The best player in the world (argue among yourselves) dropped a 19-13 scoreline in a 13-3 loss, with over 130 ADR and more multikills than the other four Spirit players combined.

tN1R is supposed to be the second rifle star and he could only muster up three kills. He was a little bit more impactful, though still not brilliant, on Ancient, as Spirit at least led 7-5 at the half, but picked up just one round on the T side to give PARIVISION a quick win that is most out of character for them.

All of those old criticisms of the system and the lack of a 'true' IGL came to the surface once more, as Spirit looked lost, out of ideas and completely directionless. They collected just 12 first kills in the entire series, and 11 rounds, despite winning 4 1vXs. Those stats tell the story of what we watched - a team rudderless in the early and mid round.

In the game of who is in more of a crisis, Liquid came out on top of NIP who take the unwanted title of biggest crisis team in the world.

xKacpersky was once more a standout in a poor NIP team, and if NIP are unwilling to change around him he will have no end of suitors in tier one. What's most worrying for NIP is that once more they had chances to win the series cleanly; Liquid took map two in double OT (though NIP never had map point, they did hit 11 first), but then after that they seemed to crumble yet again and only posted four in the first half of Ancient.

Their issues do not seem to be getting better, and losing to Liquid is pretty worrying right now.

At least one team did what they're supposed to: Vitality beat The MongolZ 2-0 (though needed OT on Overpass) with flameZ and ZywOo going crazy. Finally, some competence.