The first quarterfinal of the day had the star-studded lineup of G2 going up against the heavily team-focused Virtus.pro.
G2 chose to start the match on Mirage, the home of “m0NESY”, even though they’ve only won the map one out of three times so far at the tournament.
It was the European squad on the T-side that started best as they picked up the first three rounds of the map. After this point, it got really hard for G2 to take rounds. Virtus.pro, led by always-present “Jame”, was consistently bashing them in mid and taking space in apartments and on ramp. “m0NESY” did though manage to carry his team to a respectable six rounds before the break.
G2 got right back into it as they quickly brought themselves into the lead 10-9 after switching sides. Virtus.pro looked really strong when they had full-buys and soon they found themselves back in the lead and looking like the favorites to take map 1. “m0NESY” had been consistent throughout the map, but it was the awakening of “huNter-“ and “Aleksib” that put G2 back in the driver’s seat. This allowed them to get map point, but unfortunately for them, they couldn’t close it out and the map went into overtime.
The map went into three overtimes as the teams couldn’t seem to separate from each other. G2 failed to convert on three map-points in overtime, but a 2v5 from “m0NESY” and “Aleksib” was what finally put them over the line at 25-22.
The action continued on Virtus.pro’s pick of Ancient where G2 on the CT-side, started the map out by securing their third pistol-round of the day. “huNter-“, “NiKo” and “JACKZ” were all scorching hot from the get-go, and this fueled G2 to a dominating early lead of 7-0. Virtus.pro, who has looked great on this map recently, had a very hard time finding answers throughout the half, and with only “Jame” putting up big numbers the halftime score was 12-3 in favor of G2.
The second half started out in an extremely scrappy way, with the teams just trading rounds back and forth in the force-buy wars. This meant that G2 very quickly were able to get to map point at 15-5 and close it out 16-5.
This result sees Virtus.pro knocked out of IEM Katowice, while G2 move on to face Na’Vi tomorrow.
Virtus.pro – G2 0-2 | IEM Katowice
22-25 (Mirage) | {cflag:RU} m0NESY – 1.39 Rating / 45-34 K-D / 98.4 ADR
5-16 (Ancient) | {cflag:BA} huNter- – 1.50 Rating / 17-8 K-D / 106.5 ADR
MVP: {cflag:RU} Ilya ”m0NESY” Osipov – 1.30 Rating / 58-40 K-D / 84.6 ADR
