Day 3 of BLAST Premier ‘23 Spring Groups brought three convincing victories along with a plethora of fantastic Counter-Strike plays, so let’s get right into the summary of what happened in yesterday’s matches, shall we?
In the first match of the day, which started on Ninjas in Pyjamas’ pick Inferno, we saw some control initially shown by NIP but then completely stolen out of their hands on their own T side by Natus Vincere. Thanks to b1t’s and npl’s tremendous efforts, NAVI went from a slow start to a striking conclusion of the first map at 16:9.
Although it felt like everything on NAVI’s map pick Mirage was working in their favour, NIP were able to withstand it all and bring the game into overtime, where they closed it out with a 17:19 scoreline. A tough victory for NIP. Nevertheless, it produced some of the good-quality CS we all love to see!
On decider Overpass, NAVI were simply superior as s1mple — seemingly going into the 2023 season with newfound motivation — finally found his rhythm and started playing like s1mple does. Showing their typical cold strength, NAVI closed the map 16:8 to claim their first Spring Groups series.
The first match of Group A’s upper bracket final went down in a rather balanced manner, with Evil Geniuses showing great strength against Team Vitality on their map pick Overpass. However, ZywOo, along with Spinx, made sure to shut down EG’s attempt at taking down another world-class team on this map, as he hit the nail in the coffin at 16:11.
On the second Inferno, there was little sign of life out of EG. Despite all of the expectations, they simply weren’t able to replicate the performance they showed earlier against Heroic, and got quickly swept by Vitality with a score of 1:16.
The highly-anticipated series between the two Danish powerhouses opened up with a dominant performance from Astralis on their map pick Inferno. And while there was still hope for Heroic in the first half, Astralis kicked them to the curb with eight straight CT rounds to close off the first game off at 16:10.
However, Heroic bounced back on the second map in a dominant fashion, firmly maintaining control from beginning to end. With only three deaths and plenty of ideas on how to stop any momentum for Astralis, cadiaN led his team toward a convincing 16:4 victory, leaving Astralis in the dust of Mirage.
What we thought was going to be a dramatic finish to the Danish derby turned out to be Astralis just fizzling out, whilst Heroic looked absolutely stellar. Once they hit their state of flow, there was no competition for Heroic. Thanks to the combined efforts of jabbi and sjuush, Heroic ended the decider Vertigo with another 16:4 win.
JOIN THE COMMUNITY
Register your BLAST.tv account and join the BLAST community for Spring Groups and beyond.
WATCH SPRING GROUPS
Tune into Spring Groups on BLAST.tv and support your favourite teams.
BLAST ApS., Hauser Plads 1, 3., 1127 Copenhagen