G2 gets their first win in the VCT EMEA 2022 Stage 1 Challengers Group Stages over Turkish team SuperMassiveBlaze
G2 esports found its first VCT Challengers Group stage win after a 2-0 victory over SuperMassiveBlaze.
Even with the series sweep, SMB pushed G2 and forced out adjustments early on Split. The 8-4 SMB first half lead was less due to attacking executes failing, but G2 dropping advantageous situations. Three rounds come down to a clutch play in the first half, G2 losing all three. However, in the second half, Žygimantas “nukkye” Chmieliauskas and Auni “AvovA” Chahade got the better end of the clutches with one each. Finding value in nicely timed aggressive defensive pushes and AvovA punishing late rotations with excellent lurk positioning.
For G2 Sentinel main Johan “Meddo” Lundborg, it’s simply a matter of converting in clutch situations and continuing to work on executes in order to improve.
“To be honest, I feel like we played the attackers side (Split) pretty good,” said Meddo in the post-match interview. “It's just that we weren't able to convert the rounds, like we lost so many clutches, 1v3s, like on the pistol round on like the third round. I don’t think necessarily it’s bad, it's just we weren't able to clutch the rounds out”
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G2 reading SMB on Haven
Moving to SMB’s map pick Haven, it was a major improvement for G2 over Split. Yes, the score line is relatively the same but we saw G2 be more fearless in taking map control. The SMB setups were being read early, allowing for G2 to play more into the mind games. It later pushed out unforced errors from SMB and G2 continually waited back and punished badly timed defensive aggression
It’s a work in progress for a G2 team still integrating Cista “keloqz” Wassim into the starting Duelist role. The team is showing more cohesion in their recent matches and impressing with their proficiency on meta comps, but it’s unclear whether it will be enough to make it out of groups.
“Recently, we’ve been working a lot on structuring our game so everyone knows what to do,” said meddo, “And I think that's going to help us play our attacker side much easier”
Battle of the Breach
G2 hoody had a strong performance overall, ending with a 82% KAST and a 181 ADR, but it’s the utility usage with Breach that opens the floodgates for his teammates. Even with some mismanaged aggression from SMB on Haven, the G2 site executes were incredibly clean and led by his ability to push deep into sites.
In fact, hoody did a ton of work to deny the Killjoy-Breach composition space. He continually shut down SMB’s defensive setups, and even played the entry role at different times. He made Eren “Brave” Kasirga and the whole SMB feel his presence on site.
G2 will face BBL Esports on February 26th, while SMB moves on to play Guild Esports on February 25th.
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