The Eagles dampens the home crowd's mood
Bad News Eagles beat the Grayhound in the ESL Challenger Melbourne 2023 semi-final to qualify for the Grand Finals. The series was a three-map affair with the final map going to overtime, which the home-team should have converted but the Eagles managed to turn it around.
The series kicked off on Bad News Eagles' pick of Mirage, which was a completely one-sided show where the Eagles went 14-1 in the first half on their T side and wrapped up the map 16-1 with four out of their five players have a rating of more than 1.60. Such was the domination on Mirage, that Grayhound managed to plant the bomb only once during the entire map.
Grayhound though bounced back on their pick of Inferno. The Eagles took the pistol on the CT side to start with but the home-team put together a strong first half which saw them finish with a 9-6 lead. INS started the second half with a crucial pistol clutch and it was a flawless defence from the Australian squad as they took the series to a decider after taking their map 16-6. Sico and aliStair, both ended the map with ratings of 1.45 each.
The decider was played on Ancient and it seemed like Grayhound, carrying the momentum from Inferno, would upset the Bad News Eagles. Grayhound ended their CT half with a lead of 11-4 but the Eagles didn't give up. They bounced back to close the score at 12-8 before aliStair came in a with a crucial 1v2 AWP clutch, which seemed to be the final nail in the coffin. Bad News Eagles kept the fight up and managed to overturn the six series points Grayhounds had to take the map to overtime.
In overtime, the home-team could manage only a single round as Bad News Eagles wrapped up the map and series to break the dreams of the home team and the crowd. Grayhound's Vexite ended the map with 36 kills while Bad News Eagles' gxx- and rigoN ended with 30 and 31 kills respectively and were instrumental in their team's victory.
GrayhoundBad News Eagles| Grayhound |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Declan 'Vexite' Portelli |
55 - 59 | -4 | 81.1 | 74.3% | 1.05 |
| Alistair 'aliStair' Johnston |
51 - 50 | +1 | 71.0 | 62.2% | 1.00 |
| Jay 'Liazz' Tregillgas |
41 - 50 | -9 | 65.0 | 75.7% | 0.98 |
 Simon 'Sico' Williams |
47 - 63 | -16 | 77.9 | 67.6% | 0.86 |
| Joshua 'INS' Potter |
43 - 55 | -12 | 72.8 | 62.2% | 0.84 |
| Bad News Eagles |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Genc 'gxx-' Kolgeci |
67 - 44 | +23 | 86.5 | 71.6% | 1.29 |
 Rigon 'rigoN' Gashi |
60 - 53 | +7 | 88.6 | 68.9% | 1.21 |
| Dionis 'sinnopsyy' Budeci |
54 - 48 | +6 | 75.7 | 74.3% | 1.15 |
| Flatron 'juanflatroo' Halimi |
51 - 47 | +4 | 77.7 | 70.3% | 1.09 |
| Sener 'SENER1' Mahmuti |
45 - 45 | +0 | 81.5 | 75.7% | 1.08 |
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