Extra Salt, NASR, and MIBR’s BLAST runs were all prematurely ended after the second day of games.
The CIS teams had a great showing in the second day of in the BLAST Spring Showdown while Furia came out victorious in an all too familiar Brazilian matchup.
Extra Salt, a North American organization with former C9 members Johnny “JT” Theodosiou and Aran “Sonice” Groesbeek, made a lackluster European debut against Spirit. Though initally promising, Extra Salt’s 4 round lead was quickly cut down as Spirit won the first map, Train, 16-10.
Map two, Dust2, was even mor dominant for Spirit, only slightly faltering in the first half as the CIS team narrowly led 8-7, however a near perfect CT-side took the series 16-8. Nikolay “mir” Bityukov was integral in Spirit’s first win in the bracket, taking 46 kills and finding 94 ADR.
The EPL Season 13 finalists, Gambit, had a strong start to their BLAST run with a clean 2-0 sweep over NASR. The whole series was a highlight reel for Gambit, already surging in 2021, as they took Dust2 (16-8) and Vertigo (16-2). Giving up only 10 rounds across the whole series, this was one of Gambit’s most dominant performances in recent memory.
Gambit’s IGL Abay “Hobbit” Khasenov and 2021 IEM Katowice MVP, Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov, once again pulled their team ahead. In the relatively short series. Even after their heartbreaking loss to Heroic, Gambit certainly still seem to be in championship winning form by themselves an early contender.
Mirroring their matchup in the EPL group stage, Furia took a tight series over MIBR in a 2-0 victory and advanced on to face Gambit. Coming off an impressive run in EPL, Furia similarly still seems positioned to make another deep run. Mirage’s first half saw Furia end at a marginal deficit (8-7) however Marcel “chelo” Cespedes largely pushed Furia to the win (16-14).
The start of game 2, Vertigo, began in a similar fashion as Furia trailed 6-9 at the end of their T-side. An impressive 8 round winstreak at the start of the second half firmly put Furia ahead. MIBR were unable to keep pace as they were only able to take a single round of the surging squad. Yuri “yuurih” Santos found 25 frags and 109 ADR, continuing his string of strong showings before their match up against Gambit.
Also read:
- BLAST Spring Showdown starts with upsets (Day 1 recap)
- EPL Season 13 – The most exciting season yet?
- Evil Geniuses signing MICHU, Tarik rumored to be benched
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