ECL S49 Week 9 recap - Marsborne and Nouns impress, LAG dies

An action-packed week 9 of ESL Challenger League just came to a head, with teams fighting for seeding and a berth in the playoffs and LAG falling apart due to internal issues.

BLUEJAYS are still top of the table with a record of 17-5, but did not play any matches this week.

Nouns played some impressive CS, taking a game off of both Getting Info and Legacy to move themselves to 16-6 - level on wins with Getting Info and LFO 4. Nouns' victory against Legacy is just the second defeat for the Brazilian side that didn't come via forfeit due to the squad being in South America to begin the season. Nouns AWPer Paytyn "junior" Johnson boasts the second-highest K/D differential in the league at +98, only behind Getting Info's Deni "dea" Ediev.

Marsborne also enjoyed a solid week, racking up three good wins to just a single loss. Marsborne first split 1-1 with Akimbo, who are also in the hunt to secure themselves a playoff spot. The following double best-of-one came against NRG, and would have appeared to be a bigger challenge for Marsborne. That would not be the case. Marsborne handled NRG confidently, with 13-6 and 13-7 wins on the two maps.

The premier match of the week was Getting Info v. Nouns. The two best-of-ones began on Dust2. It was a cagey start, but Getting Info jumped out to a 6-2 lead behind Deni "dea" Ediev's dozen first-half frags. Nouns did bring it back to level the scoreline at 6-6, led by William "RUSH" Wierzba's 9-6 K/D. Both players put up good stats in the second half as well, but nearly all the rounds went Getting Info's way. Both dea and RUSH logged ten frags on the second side, but Getting Info closed the map comfortably at 13-7. Notably, junior struggled, registering an uncharacteristic 7-14 K/D.

The second and final map was Ancient and junior appeared hellbent on making up for his poor performance on Dust2. He stood out in the first half, combining with RUSH to go 11-5 and 14-8, respectively. Nouns were up 7-2 at one point, but Getting Info closed strong to bring the score to 7-5 at the interval. The orgless squad jumped out to a 10-8 lead, but Nouns remained composed. They didn't surrender another round, winning the game 13-8 through junior's 23-12 display.

LAG disbanded on March 26th and their games are no longer being factored into the standings or the league table. The team cited performed poorly and cited one of their players never making the move from EU to NA as a primary reason for their break-up. Any past games against them appear not to count. The only team that would benefit from this is Nouns, as they are the only team that lost a map to LAG. If the past results stood and any remaining games were forfeit, the only team that wouldn't have secured six points against LAG would be Nouns.

The matchups this week are:

• NRG v. Akimbo on Thursday at 09:00PM

• Party Astronauts v. Bad News Capybaras on Thursday at 09:00PM

• Getting Info v. Akimbo on Saturday at 09:00PM

After nine weeks, here are the current standings for ECL S49. Note that LAG's matches have been removed from consideration as the team has withdrawn from the event: