OG qualified for the BLAST Premier Spring Series Finals at the expense of Evil Geniuses. Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen and his troops beat EG not once, but twice, denying the No. 5 ranked team in the world a place in the Grand Finals.
OG – the Achilles heel of EG at BLAST Premier Spring Series
Due to the format of the tournament, OG qualified for the Finals despite only beating Evil Geniuses in their group. The Aleksib-led roster got out with their feet dry from an extremely tight opening encounter with EG. Both teams were able to steal a 16-14 victory on their opponent’s map pick and proceedings went even further in the decider where overtime was needed for OG to finally put an end to this absolute epic.
Totally spent from this gladiator clash, OG were man-handled by G2 in the winners’ match, which brought them right back to Evil Geniuses who had meanwhile eliminated 100 Thieves. The first two maps were again taken by the “visiting” team, although this time both maps were blowouts. These two squads just couldn’t spare us the drama after all and it was another 30-round thriller on Inferno that booked OG’s Finals spot and relegated EG to the BLAST Premier Spring Series Showdown.
OG felt what it’s like to lose in the 30th round of the third map themselves when they faced G2 for the second time. The eventual losers put up much more of a fight than they did in the first matchup with the French-Serbian roster, but still couldn’t do the job in the end, thus entering the Finals playoffs at an earlier stage.
The end of BLAST Premier Spring Series regular season
This concludes the Spring Series regular season. The twelve teams that participated are spread across the Finals and the Showdown in the following way:
Finals
- Natus Vincere (high seed)
- FaZe Clan (high seed)
- G2 (high seed)
- Complexity Gaming (low seed)
- Team Liquid (low seed)
- OG (low seed)
Showdown
- Astralis
- Team Vitality
- Made in Brazil
- Ninjas in Pyjamas
- Evil Geniuses
- 100 Thieves
Four more teams should be announced for the Showdown, taking the total number of teams to ten. The top two there will join the six teams that already qualified for the BLAST Premier Spring Series Finals. The Showdown is scheduled for June 2-7 with a $325,000 prize pool. The Finals, which hold over double the amount of money - $750,000, will take place on June 19-21.
