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MAD Lions upset G2 to advance to bracket final at BLAST

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MAD Lions completed a major upset and the first of the event, recovering impressively from a 4-16 stomping on the first map of Ancient to take Mirage and Inferno both in overtime, 19-16 and 19-17 respectively.

MAD Lions relied on their teamplay and deep playbook to take this win home, with only a single player from the squad posting above a 1.00 HLTV rating across the series.

TMB and co. find themselves with a shot at qualifying for the LAN finals

Thomas “⁠TMB⁠” Bundsbæk in the post-game interview gave insight into the team’s attitude after a tough first map:

“We are just enjoying the game at the moment, we know that we are the underdogs so we don’t come in with big expectations. Even though we lose our map, it doesn’t matter, we know we can put up a good fight on the other maps so we just kept on fighting.”

With this victory MAD Lions move on to the bracket final on Sunday at 18:30 , where they will take on the winner of Virtus.pro and Liquid for a spot at the BLAST Fall Finals.

The first map of the series was MAD Lions‘s pick of Ancient, and they were made to regret the pick. They kicked things off on the unfavoured T side, and really struggled to get anything going as G2 and in particular Nemanja “⁠huNter-⁠” Kovač shut them out round after round. It wasn’t until the end of the half that MAD Lions strung two rounds together, and it was only enough to earn them a 4-11 score.

The second half was a formality, G2 winning the pistol and closing out the game quickly 16-4. As mentioned huNter- was stellar for the boys in black, posting a hefty 132 ADR and 28 frags across a mere 20 rounds.

Our second map was Mirage, and we were in for a far closer battle. For this map MAD Lions opened up on the CT side, and they found good success early in the half, with Johannes “⁠b0RUP⁠” Borup in particular finding success in opening duels for his side. G2 found more answers as the half went on, and eventually managed to win out the half 8-7 once they had built some economic control.

MAD Lions‘s offensive side got off to the perfect start as they won the pistol and ran the score up to 12-8, giving themselves good chances to secure a third map. However once G2 won their first gun round they went on a spree themselves, posting five more on the bounce to take the score to 14-12 and making it seem like the series was done.

MAD Lions were not to go down without a fight as they managed to battle back to 15-14, before once again the tide of the map turned and G2 got an all important round to take us to overtime.

By this point the rounds had become very messy, as both teams reached deep into their bag of tricks to get the game over the line. In the end G2 simply couldn’t find their feet in OT, and MAD Lions won 4-1 to take the map 19-16.

The decider was Inferno, and G2 started this map looking like a team with a point to prove. They put together a fast paced, aggressive T side that left MAD Lions reeling, getting to a 10-5 half that seemed like it would be decisive.

Once again MAD Lions refused to lie down, as after losing the pistol to go 11-5 and stare down the barrel of defeat, they managed to grab the second round force and string a few more together to get within two rounds, 11-9.

G2 managed to break the streak and a back and forth half ensued, with neither team able to take full control of the map; MAD Lions generally got the better of the gun rounds, but G2 won two crucial eco rounds to keep it close. This continued all the way to 15-15, and we went once again to OT.

The competitive affair continued into OT, as G2 picked up the first two rounds of OT, only for MAD Lions to grab one back going into the second half. G2 simply couldn’t find anything on the T side of OT, the final round coming down to the final milliseconds on the defuse to give MAD Lions the upset and eliminate G2.

Europe
Europe

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Source: https://www.hltv.org/news/32566/mad-lions-upset-g2-to-advance-to-bracket-final-at-blast

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