SoaR outlast Ghost Academy in Group B opener
The first match of Group B saw SoaR facing off against Ghost Academy on Mirage. Michael "Grim" Wince kicked off the match for SoaR by securing three frags in the pistol round, allowing his team to quickly move their way up to a three round lead. These three rounds were all SoaR would have to their name for the majority of the half as Bryan "MAKKA" Drouillard, Jarod "Douglas" Onorato, and Chad "Oderus" Miller each secured a number of multi-kill rounds, dominating their opposition to move Ghost up to a 9-3 lead.
It was here that SoaR finally took their fourth round in the half, but an immediate reset followed to put SoaR's economy in jeopardy for the last round of the half. Despite their crushed economy, Matthew "mCe" Elmore and co. were still able to grab their final T side round, ending the half 10-5 in GHOST's favor.
The CT side domination continued in the second half as Grim took another three kills in the second pistol round, keeping SoaR in the match. From here SoaR were able to lock Ghost out of bombsites, stringing together nine rounds of their own to bring themselves up to 14 rounds. Just when it seemed like SoaR would close out the match, Ghost fought back by taking five rounds, claiming match point for themselves first. SoaR were able to outlast in the final round of regulation, bringing the game into overtime.
Although SoaR gave themselves a good chance to close out the match by taking two of the three rounds in the first half of overtime, a missed connector smoke on their T side cost them their chance to claim match point early. A back-and-forth trade of rounds saw the teams immediately push the match to a second overtime, where once again the CT side proved to be the most dominant for both teams.
Each side took all three of their CT rounds to bring the match into a third overtime, but still neither team was able to close out the match. Yet another overtime followed, but SoaR finally managed to close out the match with four rounds straight.
Ghost AcademySoaR| Ghost Academy |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Bryan 'MAKKA' Drouillard |
40 - 33 | +7 | 86.7 | 73.1% | 1.19 |
| Jarod 'Douglas' Onorato |
42 - 39 | +3 | 90.7 | 67.3% | 1.15 |
| Chad 'Oderus' Miller |
34 - 37 | -3 | 60.1 | 65.4% | 0.94 |
| Jason 'neptune' Tran |
30 - 39 | -9 | 72.8 | 67.3% | 0.91 |
| Andrew 'ShoT_UP' Orlowski |
25 - 42 | -17 | 51.0 | 65.4% | 0.67 |
| SoaR |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan 'Snakes' Amann |
43 - 30 | +13 | 77.0 | 82.7% | 1.27 |
| Logan 'Voltage' Long |
40 - 28 | +12 | 69.7 | 86.5% | 1.25 |
| Michael 'Grim' Wince |
39 - 37 | +2 | 88.0 | 71.2% | 1.20 |
| Jack 'xCeeD' Holiman |
40 - 40 | +0 | 85.4 | 80.8% | 1.19 |
| Matthew 'mCe' Elmore |
28 - 36 | -8 | 71.3 | 71.2% | 0.97 |
SoaR will face off against the winner of the match between GX and eXtatus, where they'll compete to see who can claim an early playoff spot out of Group B. Ghost Academy will face the loser of the same matchup in an elimination match.
