EG head home 0-3 after poor EPL showing
Evil Geniuses have been eliminated with little fanfare from ESL Pro League Season 17 following a loss to Mongolian upstarts IHC. With this, EG now have a dismal LAN record of 1-8 with their sole win being the much-discussed and ironically lauded win over Heroic at the very start of the year. So, what's going wrong? If we look at this IHC match as a microcosm of some of the issues within the EG camp, there's some insight for a 5-man roster that has potentially played their last match together.
Evil GeniusesIHC| Evil Geniuses |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Sanzhar 'neaLaN' Iskhakov |
51 - 46 | +5 | 81.9 | 71.4% | 1.13 |
 Jerric 'wiz' Jiang |
41 - 40 | +1 | 68.2 | 71.4% | 1.06 |
| Timothy 'autimatic' Ta |
46 - 42 | +4 | 74.0 | 65.7% | 1.02 |
 Jadan 'HexT' Postma |
36 - 45 | -9 | 58.9 | 67.1% | 0.90 |
| Vincent 'Brehze' Cayonte |
33 - 41 | -8 | 55.8 | 64.3% | 0.82 |
| IHC |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Tengis 'sk0R' Batjargal |
50 - 45 | +5 | 83.9 | 75.7% | 1.18 |
| Garidmagnai 'bLitz' Byambasuren |
47 - 42 | +5 | 72.2 | 67.1% | 1.05 |
| Tuvshintugs 'Annihilation' Nyamdorj |
41 - 38 | +3 | 61.8 | 75.7% | 1.04 |
| Baatarkhuu 'Bart4k' Batbold |
38 - 41 | -3 | 57.4 | 65.7% | 0.90 |
| Sodbayar 'Techno' Munkhbold |
36 - 44 | -8 | 65.8 | 57.1% | 0.87 |
Drowning in the Map Pool
Unfortunately for Evil Geniuses, having a 26.6% win rate in the past three months leaves them on shaky ground when it comes to maps they are truly confident on, especially as they continue to float Anubis and Mirage where EG have dual 0% win rates. Their overall lack of success on a large chunk of the map pool means EG needs to use their vetoes to cover their own deficiencies rather than picking and banning in a way that will make their opponents sweat.
Looking towards the IHC match in particular, Despite Evil Geniuses' perma ban also being IHC's perma ban, the NA squad had to use their two bans to cover Anubis and Mirage, leaving IHC wide open to float their best map, Nuke (91.6% win rate), as the the deciding map. The only small comfort EG found in this veto was being able to pick Overpass, the only map where they have a theoretical equal footing with a 33.33% win rate.
Heading into the Server
Heading into the series itself, a common problem with Evil Geniuses that is obvious by just looking at the stats lines is present straight from the beginning of the series on Inferno. Despite finding double digits in the 26 rounds of play, Vincent "Brehze" Cayonte, fails to crack double digits, ending the map off with nine kills and a eye-watering 0.64 rating.
While there's more you can say here, about the symptoms of this massive underperformance, it shows how often EG struggles to have all five players show up and be in sync on the server. As one of the players expected to be a star of this team, if Brehze can't crack double digits in 26 rounds, there is really no win condition for the team and he becomes a massive liability.
Moving onto Overpass, Evil Geniuses managed to actually show the theoretical possibilities of the lineup as massive performances from Timothy "autimatic" Ta, Sanzhar "neaLaN" Iskhakov, and Jerric "wiz" Jiang allowed EG to force a third map with an actually confident 16-6 win.
However, due to their map pool problems, after evening up the series, EG still had to then face off against IHC on their best map, Nuke. And once again, there's not really a whole lot to say here, as despite Brehze finally showing up to the game in some measure, it was autimatic's turn to have a complete collapse on the server, ending Nuke with ten kills and 50.7 ADR, far less than what's needed if EG want from one of their stars when trying to convert an opponent's best map. Now this isn't to say it was solely his fault, as Jadan "HexT" Postma, wiz, and neaLaN looked fairly out of their depth on Nuke as well.
What now?
Well with EG heading home from Malta they have some time before the BLAST Premier: Spring American Showdown. If they are really committed to this roster, the team desperately need to work on their map pool and will need to find setups that allow all five of their players to come online at the same time, especially Brehze and autimatic, who should be using their experience to take the team through these tough times.
If not, prepare for more Annihilations like this:
