NA-Talks: Week 3 - North America in Pain
Topic: CS:GO NA-Teams BLAST Spring Groups
As the BLAST Premier Spring Groups ended this week, it's time to talk. North America has some work to do, seeing as how the three NA representatives held the bottom three spots at the event. With such disappointment coming through from EG, Liquid, and Complexity, it beckons the question: Is this just the beginning, or was this a futile effort to revive the region?
What Happened?
Based on the results from all NA teams at the BLAST Spring Groups you could say that all these teams are in dire straits; With Liquid being the only team that won a match through the whole event. Evil Geniuses, and Complexity as well, ended up looking rather weak, however, the results alone don’t tell the whole story. Aside from Complexity who is still a new roster, this was EG’s, and Liquid's first event together as a full five, so growing pains like this should be expected.
Liquid showed lots of promise with their matches against FaZe, proving that they’re capable of competing against the best teams. Even though Liquid went out in the play-in stage, they battled against NAVI who is a tall order for any roster to beat. This doesn’t excuse their loss, however, it does make it understandable. Evil Geniuses won the other map for NA in the event against BIG, in a competitive best of three. BIG is a roster whose core has been together for two years, allowing them the ability to upset better teams, and also makes them a wall for unestablished rosters, like EG.
Although they just recently started working together, EG was able to take a map off BIG, and give them a very competitive third map which they could have won. The biggest disappointment of this event was Complexity. Complexity looked good against G2, even though they lost. They took 12 rounds from the mixed squad, and it felt like they would take the series from MIBR. Although the win was expected, the Brazilian team was better on that day, and bested COL 2-0, in two extremely close games.
Looking forward
Regardless of all the rosters being new, with the talent that each team has the results in all honesty could have been better. With a total of two map wins across the event for the North Americans (one of which being against another NA squad), things don't look good. COL was poised for a win against MIBR but fell short, and EG couldn’t finish against BIG. With the talent laid across these squads, better results should have been achieved. Even though the results were disappointing, none of the North American teams looked hopeless, which allows the faithful supporters to have some faith looking forward.
The next time we'll get to see the North American representatives is in IEM Katowice on February 15th. The event will feature Liquid in the group stage, and Complexity in the play-in stage.
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