Imperial head to quarterfinals
Both teams might have already qualified for the playoffs at the BLAST Spring Finals in Washington, D.C., but this match is set to determine who gets an easy bye into the Top 4. For Imperial, they shocked everyone with a 2-0 victory over Vitality and looked to repeat their success once more against the Europeans in G2. For Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo, this match is just a further continuation of his inability to defeat Nikola "NiKo" Kovač.
The match started out on Imperial's pick of Ancient, where it was NiKo that got the game off to a dominant start. The Bosnian rifler defied all odds by claiming 30 frags in the first half as his European squad powered their way to a 12-3 half. The second half would go slightly better for Imperial, but it wasn't enough as they fell 16-7 to start off the best-of-three.
Hope was almost lost for the Brazilians after losing their own map pick, but it would be Marcelo "chelo" Cespedes to help lead his team to revenge. He and Vinicius "VINI" Figueiredo lead the team to a consistently back-and-forth match that saw the first half end in their favor 10-5. Being forced onto the CT-side, they allowed G2 to get dangerously close to tying it all up, but eventually would eventually close it out 16-13 to set up a final game on Nuke.
It was Nuke where the two sides had to finally settle the hotly-contested match. The first half started going the way of Imperial as they jumped out to a massive 7-0 T-side lead. G2 started chipping away at that lead, cutting it down to only a three-round lead as the first half ended 9-6. The second half would not go the way that Imperial would have liked as G2 immediately came back to take a 12-10 lead. Despite Imperial attempting to tie it up, G2 was simply too strong and was able to secure a 16-13 victory to win the series 2-1.
ImperialG2| Imperial |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Jhonatan 'JOTA' Willian |
42 - 50 | -8 | 66.1 | 67.9% | 0.95 |
| Vinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo |
55 - 58 | -3 | 69.5 | 61.7% | 0.95 |
| Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes |
45 - 54 | -9 | 67.6 | 64.2% | 0.94 |
| Ricardo 'boltz' Prass |
46 - 60 | -14 | 70.0 | 64.2% | 0.86 |
| Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo |
46 - 58 | -12 | 51.0 | 66.7% | 0.80 |
| G2 |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač |
75 - 47 | +28 | 93.1 | 82.7% | 1.47 |
 Ilya 'm0NESY' Osipov |
66 - 51 | +15 | 87.7 | 76.5% | 1.31 |
| Nemanja 'huNter-' Kovač |
61 - 43 | +18 | 77.4 | 80.2% | 1.22 |
 Rasmus 'HooXi' Nielsen |
44 - 53 | -9 | 70.5 | 74.1% | 1.02 |
 Justin 'jks' Savage |
33 - 40 | -7 | 42.4 | 74.1% | 0.88 |
