Team Liquid have sent Astralis home from IEM Winter following a dominant 2-0 victory today in Group A’s lower bracket round two.
The North Americans were in control of this CS:GO series from the very beginning. Liquid steamrolled over Astralis on their CT side on Nuke, winning 14 out of 15 rounds. The Danes lost the map 16-1 and had to fight for their tournament life on Mirage, Liquid’s map pick. Even though Astralis did better overall, their T side was too weak there too. The North Americans took advantage of that to close out the map 16-10 and proceed to the Group A lower bracket final.
Former North in-game leader Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen pointed out on Twitter after the game was over that Astralis only won one full-buy on their T side in this series. The Danes made deep roster changes following the PGL Stockholm Major in early November, replacing Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen and Emil “Magisk” Reif with Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke and Benjamin “blameF” Bremer, and did not have too much time to practice because of BLAST Premier Fall Final and IEM Winter.
Today’s victory comes as a surprise to many Liquid fans because players like Jake “Stewie2K” Yip and Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski said in November, after their lackluster performance at the CS:GO Major, that changes were coming. Since then, the North Americans have been playing better and have a good chance of booking a playoff appearance since they’ll either face NiP or OG, two teams they beat recently.
Liquid will return to the server tomorrow at 9:45am CT to play another elimination match while Astralis will have almost two weeks to prepare for the $1 million BLAST Premier World Final.
