After a 3-map battle, Evil Geniuses have been eliminated from BLAST Premier Fall Groups, leaving Liquid as the only North American team remaining in the tournament.
They were eliminated by Ninjas in Pyjamas’ CS:GO team that came out on top 2-1 on Thursday in the first knockout stage round of BLAST Premier Fall Groups.
With the win, NiP also stay alive in the tournament. This victory also leaves them with a good chance of securing a spot in the BLAST Premier Fall Finals in November.
However, EG will have to go through a much harder path because they have been relegated to the Fall Showdown in October. They will battle for one spot against 15 teams in the tournament.
The Swedish powerhouse made a good start after a clean 2-0 against EG courtesy of their win on Nuke (16-7), but the North Americans responded on Overpass and tied the series with a 16-7 victory.
Inferno was the decider of the bebest-of-three. Since it was as balanced as it usually is, it became anyone’s game. But after the 9-6 first half in favour of NiP, EG could not find their form on the CT side, and the Ninjas ran away with the series with a 16-11 victory.
Kudos to the NiP players who showed up during the series. Moreover, Patrick “es3tag” Hansen deserves more recognition because the Danish rifler turned AWPer dominated EG and their sniper Tsvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov on Inferno. Es3tag got a 1.27 rating after finishing the decider with a 23-13 K/D.
Although EG was eliminated, they showed some positive signs in the game. Thus, the elimination is not the end of the world for EG.
The NA CS:GO side returned for the second half of the season with a new in-game leader in Sanzhar “neaLaN” Iskhakov and a new rifler, Jadan “HexT” Postma.
They had mainly used BLAST Premier Fall Groups as a test run. At least, they would have figured out what they need to focus on in the coming months.
NiP will continue their hunt for the ticket when they return to the server Tomorrow and face Team Liquid, the last North American team alive in the competition, at 9:30 am CT.
Written by Oladipupo Mojeed
