Spirit survive a BIG scare as Aurora, NAVI, and FURIA all move on.

Spirit gave their fans a good scare today, nearly going down to BIG.

The #1 VRS-ranked team in the world was already sentenced to a lower-bracket run due to a BO1 loss against JiJieHao, so they had no margin for error. Imagine our shock then when they dropped Cache — the series opener — to BIG pretty convincingly. The final score was 13:9, sure, but BIG looked amazing on their T-side.

Even more spectacularly, the second map looked for a moment to go BIG's way as well.

They built a 10:5 lead, thanks to gr1ks being on his A-game and dropping 22 kills, including a sick noscope play. Unfortunately, he was the only one getting impact frags. blameF finished 20-14, with a negative round swing. The rest of his team were all solidly negative, giving Spirit the platform they used to come back. They won eight straight rounds to close the map, 13:10.

That missed opportunity really came back to bite BIG in the end.

Especially because Mirage was a case of minor déjà vu. BIG built a small lead on the CT side of Mirage, which, in fairness, is a very CT-sided map, but still they had a chance. A chance Spirit crushed utterly and completely, going on another 8-round win streak to win Mirage. donk was to thank for this, as he went completely turbo on CT-side, getting 18 kills in those eight rounds at a 3.66 rating and a 3.0 on CT.

Spirit have made the playoffs, but it was too close for comfort.

Elsewhere, three of the big boys did their job properly.

FURIA and NAVI in particular will be happy with their group-stage showing so far, both making it through the “upper bracket.” This should maximize their odds of an easier next-round game. Aurora, meanwhile, had to go through the lower bracket, becoming a landmine for an UB team.

No team, no matter how good, will want to run into Jimpphat playing at the level he did today, as he was a beast against JiJieHao. Which, admittedly, is a bit like being the valedictorian of summer school, but you play what’s in front of you.

The final two games saw two teams going home.

paiN sent Wildcard back home, in a series that, despite a 2-1 scoreline, was pretty one-sided. paiN were the better team on both of the last two maps, a trend in these lower-bracket games. Magic gave 3DMAX a similar treatment, beating them 2-0 and letting them get only 13 rounds across both maps.

And that’s another day of EWC wrapped up, we'll be back tomorrow to recap the days proceedings. See you then.