Nouns felled in Jönköping by Eternal Fire
Early this morning, Nouns waved goodbye to ESL Challenger Jönköping following a 2-0 loss to Eternal Fire, with the rematch being a decisive affair for the Turkish team. In the best-of-three series, the veto set up a replay of the teams' showdown on Vertigo, before moving onto Nouns' pick of Nuke and the deciding map of Overpass.
Despite Nouns managing to take down Eternal Fire in a close matchup the day before, this second outing on Vertigo ended up entirely one sided for Eternal Fire. After Eternal Fire owe their opening T-side pistol, young gun Ali "Wicadia" Haydar Yalçın was decisive in winning the half for the Turks, with the team powering through to a 4-0 lead before Nouns were able to get on the board. The rest of the half would see Nouns struggle to find rounds before Eternal Fire won their T-side 9-3. Unfortunately for Nouns, after switching sides Eternal Fire's dominance continued as they won the pistol round before clinching a perfect CT-side and winning Vertigo 13-3.
Moving onto Nuke, Eternal Fire would once again pick up the opening pistol round and climb up to a 4-0 lead. However, this time around Nouns would give a better showing in the first half as they won five out of the next eight rounds to trial 5-7 heading into their CT-side. This close lead quickly though as Eternal Fire picked yet another pistol round to go 4-0 in the series, using this momentum to rapidly outpace Nouns and win Nuke 13-9, sending the Americans packing.
NounsEternal Fire| Nouns |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Carson 'nosraC' O'Reilly |
23 - 28 | -5 | 60.5 | 57.9% | 0.81 |
| David 'cynic' Polster |
24 - 29 | -5 | 61.5 | 63.2% | 0.78 |
| Christopher 'cJ dA K1nG' Jones |
18 - 31 | -13 | 61.6 | 68.4% | 0.74 |
 Edgar 'MarKE' Maldonado |
22 - 33 | -11 | 61.3 | 47.4% | 0.71 |
| Brendan 'Bwills' Williams |
18 - 33 | -15 | 62.5 | 50.0% | 0.63 |
| Eternal Fire |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Ali 'Wicadia' Haydar Yalçın |
35 - 23 | +12 | 96.3 | 78.9% | 1.47 |
| Buğra 'Calyx' Arkın |
32 - 17 | +15 | 75.6 | 89.5% | 1.38 |
| Ismailcan 'XANTARES' Dörtkardeş |
32 - 26 | +6 | 92.2 | 76.3% | 1.34 |
| Özgür 'woxic' Eker |
29 - 22 | +7 | 82.5 | 78.9% | 1.27 |
| Engin 'MAJ3R' Küpeli |
23 - 18 | +5 | 65.4 | 76.3% | 1.21 |
With this loss, Nouns exit their final LAN event of 2023 comes after a mixed showing in Jönköping. One key considered however, is that Kory "SEMPHIS" Friesen was unable to assist his team for the entirety of the event due to coming down with a bad case of food poisoning, which potentially affected the young team's LAN performance.
