Will this be the first time in 2022 that Vitality make the Grand Finals of a tier 1 tournament?
ENCE put up a resilient fight against the star-studded Vitality, but fell short, losing 0-2 in the BLAST Premier Series: Spring Finals quarterfinals. Vitality move on to face G2 esports in the semifinals of the $425,000 tournament.
Vitality had a strong start to the series going 8-0 on the T side of Overpass. By the time ENCE finally managed to get their economy in order, things were a little dire for them already. However, the Finnish squad still managed to string together six CT rounds to salvage what seemed to have been a very difficult start to the quarterfinal.
With this victory, BLAST Premier Spring Finals will be the first time that we see this iteration of Vitality playing on LAN.
Going to the arena and playing in front of the crowd is going to be amazing. It's been a long time. Even for me, with the COVID thing, I don't think I've done it for like two and a half years. It's going to be unreal and crazy, I'm looking forward to it.
Vitality one step away from the Finals
A 6-9 start to Overpass is not a bad start by any means. However, the momentum was clearly in Vitality’s favor who were moving around the map with confidence and dominance. ENCE managed to win just four rounds on their T side, giving Vitality the lead in the quarterfinal series.
ApeX and Zywoo were the top performers on Vitality with 25 and 21 kills respectively. With a 93.5 ADR, apeX was clearly playing in fantastic form and he’s one that G2 will be watching closely in the semifinals.
The second map of Nuke was much closer. This time, it was ENCE that started strong, taking a lead on their T side. There were quite a few moments which came down to 1v1s and eventually ENCE were ahead with a 9-6 score.
The new Nuke is no longer as CT-sided as before, and Vitality Dupreeh agreed in the post-match interview.
Nuke in general is more T sided nowadays than it was back in the days. So having those 10-12-13 rounds as CT is not always a possibility. I'm really happy, we managed to get as many rounds as we did on Nuke. Nuke has been, I wouldn't say shaky, but it hasn't been our stronghold either. It was very much in the mix and it could have gone either way. So I'm happy we got as many as we got.
But looking at the match, it was easy to see both teams struggling on the CT side. ENCE did not manage to string together many rounds on their CT side, eventually the map went to OT.
In OT, Vitality came out ahead, carrying their momentum from the second half to win the series despite some heroic efforts.
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Image Credit: Vitality.