The Battle between the two North American teams saw Team Liquid and Swole Patrol in a Best of Three. This was most definitely an outmatch as Team Liquid is one of the best teams in the world. On the other hand, Swole Patrol is a team that is slowly rising in the North American scene. Team liquid comes into this tournament as one of the favourites to win the entire event. As for Swole Patrol, they would be more than happy to just reach the Playoffs at the event.
Here are the maps for this series:
- Swole patrol picked Nuke
- Team liquid picked Inferno.
- The Third map is Dust 2.
Map 1 – Nuke
For Swole Patrol, their best possible map for this match was Nuke. it is a map that Team Liquid is known to be weak on and that would play to Swole Patrol’s advantage. At the same time, we have not seen Swole Patrol much on this map especially against much stronger teams.
Despite Swole patrol winning the pistol round, Liquid was able to get it back in the second round itself. Their dominance on the CT half continued through the first half as NAF shut down Swole Patrol repeatedly. His dominance with the rifle was crucial for Team liquid almost always playing at an advantage. For swole patrol, most of their performances came as they were always going to play at a huge disadvantage.
Swole Patrol was always playing catchup with Freakazoid attempting risky plays for that elusive entry frag. Instead, he constantly became the entry frag as Team Liquid was able to take down the veteran constantly.
With a final score of 10-5 at the end of the first half, it was still a decent score for Swole Patrol. In the end, however, Team liquid never let go of their pressure on their T side. Swole Patrol was totally unable to have any presence of mind on the CT side. They did not manage to win a single round on their CT side and the lack of economy did not provide any advantage to the team either.
Team Liquid won the map with relative ease cementing their position as one of the strongest teams at the event.
Map 2 – Inferno
The second map was Inferno, a very generic map. The analysts felt that the final map pool could potentially prove to be a problem for Team Liquid. However, Liquid showed why they are considered to be one of the best teams in the world. They had a dominating performance on Inferno as well continuing their progress from Nuke.
Team liquid had a dominating T side with 13 rounds on board. There is not much to say about this, except that every player on the team performed optimally. The Liquid roster was able to make excellent movements and trade frags across the map, something that broke the economy of the Swole Patrol Roster.
Going into the second half, Team liquid only needed three rounds to win the series. They did allow some leeway to Swole Patrol but they were easily able to close out the map in the end. Swole Patrol is still alive in the tournament and will play off against Ninjas in Pyjamas to decide which team will be eliminated from the event.
