Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team Vitality and BIG won their semifinal matches Friday and clinched their spots in the finals at the BLAST Premier Spring Groups event.
Ninjas rebounded from losing the first map to beat Natus Vincere, 2-1. Vitality swept MIBR and BIG upset Astralis, 2-0.
Last week, two teams were split into three double-elimination, best-of-one groups competing to determine seeding for the play-in stage, which features best-of-three matches. Friday’s winners are joined in the finals by G2 Esports, OG and FaZe Clan, who had earned double-byes by winning their groups in the previous stage.
MIBR, NaVi and Astralis are not eliminated yet. They moved into the “last chance matches” portion of the bracket with one more shot to qualify for the top six.
At stake are the top six spots earning berths in the $425,000 Spring Finals in June, with the bottom six teams falling to the Spring Showdown.
NaVi jumped ahead in Friday’s match by winning 16-11 on Nuke, but NiP responded with a 16-11 victory on Overpass and broke the tie with a 16-7 win on Mirage.
Swedes Hampus “hampus” Poser and Nicolas “Plopski” Gonzalez Zamora guided NiP; hampus scored 62 kills and a plus-12 kills-to-deaths differential, while Plopski had a match-high plus-16 differential with 61 kills. Ukrainian Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev carried NaVi with 67 kills and a plus-14 differential.
Vitality raced past MIBR 16-10 on Dust II and 16-5 on Inferno. Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut of France starred for Vitality with 44 kills and a plus-23 K-D. Brazil’s Breno “brnz4n” Poletto had 31 kills for MIBR.
BIG, who advanced this far by beating Evil Geniuses 2-1 during Thursday’s action, defeated Astralis 16-13 on Dust II before finishing off the sweep 16-7 on Mirage.
Florian “syrsoN” Rische of Germany posted a fabulous plus-30 differential with 50 kills. Benjamin “blameF” Bremer paced the all-Danish Astralis squad with 33 kills.
The play-in stage will continue Saturday with three finals matches:
G2 Esports vs. Team Vitality
OG vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas
FaZe Clan vs. BIG
BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2022 prize pool
1-3. TBD — $27,500, 2,400 BLAST Premier points (Spring Finals)
4-6. TBD — $17,500, 1,200 BLAST Premier points (Spring Finals)
7-9. TBD — $8,500, 900 BLAST Premier points (Spring Showdown)
10-12. Complexity Gaming, Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses — $5,666, 600 BLAST Premier points (Spring Showdown)
–Field Level Media
