NAVI sends Monte home

The first semifinal of the ESL Pro League Season 18 saw Natus Vincere (NAVI) face Monte as it was s1mple going up against his compatriots.

Monte's pick of Anubis got things underway and it was a red-hot CT start from Monte with a 5-1 lead. NAVI bounced back into the half on the back of s1mple and b1t's consecutive 1v2 clutches. NAVI clawed it back to 7-8 with br0 ending the half with a triple B hold.

Source: ESL

Woro2k and br0 opened up the B site for Monte to take the second pistol and went 11-7 up before jL and b1t A hold saw NAVI get their CT sided started. s1mple's 1v2 on the B site saw NAVI tie up the game at 12-12 and it was s1mple, who put his foot down and was at his regular best to help NAVI pick up Monte's map pick of Anubis at 16-12 with s1mple and b1t leading from the front with 22 and 21 kills.

Monte secured the opening pistol on NAVI's pick of Mirage, starting on the CT side and it was a 4-0 start before NAVI got their first T round. An ace from sdy saw Monte win out the half but Aleksib answered back with an ace of his own to help NAVI end the first half at 6-9.

Source: ESL

b1t's triple saw NAVI take their first pistol of the series and after the conversions and winning the first gun round, NAVI took the lead at 10-9. It was a complete NAVI shutdown as Monte found no footing and it was an incredible 1v3 from b1t on the B site which saw NAVI close Mirage at 16-10.

NAVI now wait in the Grand Finals for their opponents, who will be decided after the ENCE and MOUZ game.

ESL Pro League Season 18

Bo3

Monte

0 - 2

Natus Vincere

All maps

Monte	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 2.0
Viktor 'sdy' Orudzhev	40 - 35	+5	84.6	70.4%	1.19
Volodymyr 'Woro2k' Veletniuk	41 - 37	+4	85.1	70.4%	1.14
Alexander 'br0' Bro	33 - 34	-1	65.4	70.4%	1.02
Szymon 'kRaSnaL' Mrozek	29 - 34	-5	57.3	75.9%	0.87
Sergiy 'DemQQ' Demchenko	31 - 41	-10	67.7	70.4%	0.86

Natus Vincere	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 2.0
Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy	43 - 36	+7	73.5	74.1%	1.18
Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen	38 - 31	+7	76.3	74.1%	1.13
Mihai 'iM' Ivan	35 - 35	+0	85.1	63.0%	1.13
Oleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev	37 - 33	+4	61.9	72.2%	1.04
Justinas 'jL' Lekavicius	28 - 39	-11	59.1	61.1%	0.86