G2 edge past Imperial to secure Top 4 at BLAST Premier Spring Finals
After the scorching start for Imperial in the series against Vitality, they take on G2 to potentially lock in a semi-finals berth at Washington. Will the international squad fumble an on-paper easy game?
The match started on Ancient, with NiKo's triple giving fans a taste of what's to come. The Bosnian rifler absolutely took over the game, ascending to a form for the player that has become rarer in recent years. By round 8, NiKo had put up 19 kills with no deaths before JOTA finally put him down to give Imperial their first round. But NiKo just kept at it, with massive impact round after round. G2 ended 12-3 up in the half, with NiKo taking 30 kills in the half. The team hit matchpoint to start the second half, but Imperial put up a bit of resistance in the gun rounds as NiKo finally went silent for a few rounds. Nevertheless, the International squad still closed the map comfortably at 16-7, with 35 kills for NiKo.
The series moved on to Inferno, with G2 getting another pistol win to start with a 3-0 lead. But in the first gun. round chelo and JOTA, the two stars of Imperial, took control. Imperial should have taken the lead at 4-3, but a fumble from JOTA and fallen led to a JKS 1v2 that gave G2 a 4th. VINI popped off on his signature map topping the scoreboard to keep Imperial's March going strong, and the Brazilians ended the half with a 10-5 lead.
m0NESY and NiKo took the pistol round win. A VINI clutch followed by m0NESY's rebuttal kept the game back and forth before HooXi on the AWP pulled out a massive play with 3 noscopes in an almost m0NESY-esque fashion. Fallen and chelo were the stars of rounds 21-23 to put Imperial on 14, but G2 kept at it, almost tieing the game up, but VINI and boltz took their turns with M4 triples to lock the map win for Imperial.
The final frontier, Nuke, started with an Imperial pistol win, and the team absolutely dominated the first quarter of the map, putting up 7 rounds in a row before G2 even got started. The G2 trio started to get going, and the half ended up being a close but surprising lead for Imperial at 9-6. G2 then kicked off the second half with a streak of 2. In round 19, G2's attack was taken down early, but disaster struck as Imperial misread the B plant for the A site giving G2 the lead.
It was round 22 when Imperial finally managed to lock G2's attack out to get a round on the board. The following round paid Imperial back for the fumbled 1v2, and fallen took the last-second smoke defuse to steal the round. Back and forth the two teams went, but Imperial denied the m0NESY clutch to tie the game up at 13-13. A HooXi double secured a 14th, and a single kill from NiKo was all it took to force out the save and set G2 up at matchpoint. A perfect ramp hit from G2 locked the series down, sending them to the Semi-Finals after a gruelling series.
ImperialG2| Imperial |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Jhonatan 'JOTA' Willian |
42 - 50 | -8 | 66.1 | 67.9% | 0.95 |
| Vinicius 'VINI' Figueiredo |
55 - 58 | -3 | 69.5 | 61.7% | 0.95 |
| Marcelo 'chelo' Cespedes |
45 - 54 | -9 | 67.6 | 64.2% | 0.94 |
| Ricardo 'boltz' Prass |
46 - 60 | -14 | 70.0 | 64.2% | 0.86 |
| Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo |
46 - 58 | -12 | 51.0 | 66.7% | 0.80 |
| G2 |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač |
75 - 47 | +28 | 93.1 | 82.7% | 1.47 |
 Ilya 'm0NESY' Osipov |
66 - 51 | +15 | 87.7 | 76.5% | 1.31 |
| Nemanja 'huNter-' Kovač |
61 - 43 | +18 | 77.4 | 80.2% | 1.22 |
 Rasmus 'HooXi' Nielsen |
44 - 53 | -9 | 70.5 | 74.1% | 1.02 |
 Justin 'jks' Savage |
33 - 40 | -7 | 42.4 | 74.1% | 0.88 |
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