What to expect from Liquid v. Nouns

With the BLAST Spring Finals being held in Washington, D.C., all the American sides will be extra motivated to fight for a chance to play in front of their home crowd. Liquid's opening opposition will be Nouns, who already managed to qualify for one NA-based event this year in IEM Dallas.

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Liquid's playoff pain

Liquid come into the Showdown from a shaky performance at ESL Pro League Season 17. The tournament started off and ended with two upset losses against teams Liquid should be beating, in Rare Atom and paiN. Whilst Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis posted his highest event rating of the year, the team failed to build on their top four finish at IEM Katowice. The Showdown will be a good chance for Liquid to adjust to playing American opposition ahead of the RMR, however, they must be careful as there will be no second chance if they suffer a loss in the single elimination bracket.

YEKINDAR 1.14 rating at EPL
Keith "NAF" Markovic 1.31 rating at BLAST Spring Showdown 2022
not qualified for BLAST Spring Finals since 2020

Nouns qualification kings

Apart from the ESL Challenger Melbourne qualifier, which the team decided to pull out of to focus on other tournaments, Nouns have made a habit of successful qualification runs since adding Mexican rifler Edgar "MarkE" Maldonado. Including qualification to the BLAST Paris Americas RMR, IEM Dallas and the Spring Showdown itself. However, Liquid sit 42 places above Nouns in the HLTV rankings and provide a good test ahead of their all-important trip to Mexico for the RMR.

MarkE 1.17 rating past 3 months
Three match losing streak
Five map winstreak on Overpass

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Previous Matchups

Unsurprisingly the two teams have rarely met up, however last year they did clash in the IEM Dallas closed qualifier. Liquid walked over the Nouns core with a 16-4, 16-6 victory. Although this was with both teams having different rosters.

Likely Vetoes

The veto process for BLAST events gives the higher seed the choice between banning first or second, as witnessed at Pro League, Liquid tended to favor banning second. All stats are filtered for the past three months.

Nouns ban Ancient, played four times
Liquid ban Vertigo, perma ban
Nouns pick Inferno, 70% winrate across 20 maps
Liquid pick Mirage, first picked in four of their last six games
Both teams are comfortable on Overpass so likely it will be the third map

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