Cloud9 take down Liquid; move on to iBUYPOWER finals
The maps for the series were drawn to Inferno, Overpass, and Cobblestone.
The first two maps were won by the teams that picked them convincingly, with Liquid crushing Cloud9 16-3 on Inferno, and Cloud9 returning the favor with a 16-5 drubbing on Overpass.
The decider map of Cobblestone was a much more back and forth affair. Cloud9 won the opening pistol on the Counter-Terrorist side, but Liquid immediately countered with four rounds of their own. Strong play at the drop position from Will "RUSH" Wierzba was a huge boon for Cloud9, and they were able to secure an 8-7 advantage for themselves at the half.
Cloud9 would win the second pistol as well, but again be shut down by Liquid in the following round. However, the resets and strong play of Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken were not enough for Liquid, as Cloud9 were able to pull out eco rounds of their own, and take the map with the score of 16-11
LiquidCloud9| Liquid |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken |
68 - 43 | +25 | 102.4 | 76.1% | 1.53 |
 Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski |
44 - 49 | -5 | 77.3 | 71.6% | 1.04 |
| Nick 'nitr0' Cannella |
39 - 43 | -4 | 66.3 | 73.1% | 0.99 |
| Josh 'jdm64' Marzano |
41 - 50 | -9 | 68.1 | 62.7% | 0.88 |
| Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguz |
36 - 44 | -8 | 63.0 | 65.7% | 0.85 |
| Cloud9 |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jake 'Stewie2K' Yip |
56 - 46 | +10 | 95.1 | 73.1% | 1.33 |
| Timothy 'autimatic' Ta |
53 - 46 | +7 | 82.0 | 76.1% | 1.13 |
| Tarik 'tarik' Celik |
42 - 46 | -4 | 78.1 | 80.6% | 1.11 |
| William 'RUSH' Wierzba |
52 - 49 | +3 | 78.0 | 64.2% | 1.01 |
| Tyler 'Skadoodle' Latham |
25 - 41 | -16 | 43.7 | 65.7% | 0.76 |
Cloud9 will now face the Australian/North American mixture of Renegades in the iBUYPOWER Masters 2017 grand finals. The Americans will be looking to do one placement better than last year, where they were the runners up to Immortals in the 2016 edition of the event.
