NAVI eliminate NiKo and company from BLAST World Final
s1mple and company live to fight another day at BLAST World Final after a hard-fought victory over G2.
Natus Vincere beat G2 2-1 in the second round of the BLAST Premier World Final lower bracket, setting up a match against the winner of Astralis and Liquid on Saturday at 19:30 (CET), while NiKo and company leave the tournament with a 5-6th place finish.
The action started on Nuke, the same map that NAVI had picked against G2 in the PGL Major Stockholm Grand final, in which they took the French-Balkan mixture down with a 22-19 scoreline. This time wasn’t any different with the Russian-Ukrainian squad coming out on top after a very close and intense fight. NAVI dominated early on in the first half and cruised to a 7-1 lead as G2’s passive approach allowed s1mple and company to get a lot of space. The French-Balkan mixture, however, picked themselves up and bagged the remaining rounds to end the first half with a small advantage. Despite an incredible performance from Nikola “NiKo” Kovac who played his heart out, G2 weren’t able to get a victory over the line as NAVI took the lead in the series after closing out the map 16-14. The Bosnian star posted a 2.02 rating and dropped a total of 35 frags with 10 of them being first kills.
The series continued on the streets of Inferno, where G2 came out on top after an intense fight in overtime. nexa’s men went in at half-time 6-9 down but quickly closed the gap to just one round in the second half by stringing together six rounds in a row. Once NAVI built their economy up again, they regained control of the map and won three rounds to hit match point, but failed to put an end to the map as G2 secured the last two rounds to force overtime. In OT, G2 tied the series 1-1 after closing out the map with a 22-19 victory.
On the decider of Mirage, NAVI opened the match on the CT-side and quickly took control of the game before cruising to dominant 11-4 half. G2 looked shaky in the second half due to their poor showing on the offensive side and couldn’t pick themselves up to make a difference. Boombl4’s men on the other side, were full of momentum and kept the French-Balkan mixture away from even adding a single round to the scoreboard, comfortably closing the map 16-4 and the series 2-1.
Nuke: 16-14 | NiKo – 2.02 Rating – 35-18 K/D – 134-7 ADR
Inferno: 19-22 | s1mple – 1.35 Rating – 36-26 K/D – 88.2 ADR
Mirage: 16-4 | s1mple – 2.21 Rating – 30-10 K/D – 133.1 ADR
MVP: 
