It's no secret that for the past eighteen months, Evil Geniuses have been the laughing stock of tier one Counter-Strike. A team constantly knocked out of tournaments at the earliest opportunity, their rosters consistently failed to live up to the billing of the stars they possessed.
Having made huge changes by promoting their EG Black team during the recent off-season, EG are now looking to change that while ushering in a new era for North American Counter-Strike, and while this tournament came too soon for them to find success, it did show the potential this lineup has to offer.
The new Evil Geniuses couldn't ask for a harder debut game than when they faced Vitality in the opening game of the event. A match in which they failed to even hit double digits for rounds won, the BLAST.tv Major Champions ran riot on both Overpass and Vertigo.
EG's next game, while still a 2-0 defeat, showed far more of the roster's potential. Facing off against NIP, the opening map of Inferno required two overtimes for the Swedish team to close it out, and had headtr1ck not put in a superstar performance with 43 kills, EG might have won the map themselves.
Vertigo wasn't as close, but it was still a decent showing for the NA side. Both autimatic and Walco fragged well, and despite the loss, more of the potential of this EG side to far surpass the previous one was displayed.
Having dropped down into the gauntlet, the final game of their time at Fall Groups would be played against G2. A match they almost won, once again, the new boys of Evil Geniuses showed they had the potential to match the firepower and tactics of the titans of EU.
An incredibly close game, it was a huge surprise to people to see Evil Geniuses win on the second map, Nuke. A 16-13 victory, despite NiKo's 35-17 scoreline, a strong performance from junior managed to turn the map in EG's favour.
EG almost won the series on the final map, Mirage. 15-10, G2 needed a run of five CT rounds at the end of the game to even take the map to overtime. With momentum firmly in their favour at that point, they also won the next four, and with EG failing to pick up a round in overtime, they lost the map and series 19-15 to be eliminated.
That doesn't mean all hope is lost for EG. Considering the promise shown in their debut, there's a very good chance that when Showdown comes along, they will be a team ready to compete and qualify for Fall Final then.
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