After 18 matches over a chaotic 3 days, OG, G2 & FaZe have set themselves as the highest seeds going forward in the tournament, although for Evil Geniuses, Complexity, NAVI & Astralis an absolute nightmare of games saw them quickly dropping seedings early on.
The shock results came early on, with the first match of Group B, with MIBR vs Natus Vincere an obvious result in many people's eyes. However the reality was the exact opposite as MIBR sank the CIS dreams straight out the gates, going 16-12 against last year's #1 team. Natus were then immediately sent downwards to the lower brackets, where they came across Astraliis, themselves suffering a surprisingly poor defeat to OG before landing themselves in the lower bracket too. However, Astralis rallied around after their loss and took the match against NAVI into overtime before seeing them off 19-17 on Mirage, giving NAVI a surprisingly low seeding going forward to the Single Eliminations.
On the flip side though, for G2 & OG their paths to the end of the group stage were without fault, all coming down from the starting block to their Group's Final without a loss. Let's start with G2, to start with they demolished Complexity (16-12), took on NIP, who were still missing device due to illness(16-6), and then finally a rematch with NIP for the finals, which went to multiple overtime before G2 was able to clinch it 22-19. Moving to OG, they started by bulldozing through Astralis (16-8), then MIBR (16-9), and then finally a rematch with Astralis that again went 16-8 for OG, in what must have been severe deja vu for all concerned. Lastly, and earlier today, FaZe had a torturous route to winning their group, after firstly beating off Liquid during overtime (19-15), they then suffered a huge defeat to Vitality 19-15, after Vitality were able to claw back to 15-15 after FaZe previously had 15-7 and it seemed a clear win. This saw FaZe rematch with Liquid, another overtime affair (19-17) before managing to exact revenge upon Vitality in the Group Final and take it 16-10.
The teams now have a few days of down time, before dashing straight through to the knockouts where now all the teams have been seeded based upon group performances, and this is where the teams can be sent home early. At the end of next week, 6 of the teams qualify for Spring Showdown, the other 6 will qualify for a fast forward pass to the Spring Finals. Teams who won their group only enter the fray in the next stage on Round 3, and early losses incurred by teams mean they enter at either Round 1 or Round 2, giving them a much longer and more arduous path to the Spring Finals. Starting in Round 1 will be Complexity vs MIBR, then Natus Vincere vs Liquid, and BIG vs Evil Geniuses, all coming at you on Thursday 3rd February. Winning teams will then face off against either Vitality, NIP or Astralis at the next bracket, and then finally the winners of Round 2 face off against our Group Stage winners, FaZe, OG or G2.
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