Version1 recovered from a weak start to the spring split on May 21 to win their second regional of the season over their rivals FaZe Clan. This marks the first title for NA’s biggest rookie of the last few years, Daniel “Daniel” Piecensk.
After making a name for himself in underaged tournaments, Daniel debuted in the RLCS at the beginning of 2022 on Spacestation Gaming, replacing Caden “Sypical” Pellegrin. Just four days later he justified the hype around him as he took SSG to a second-place finish in the first winter regional, losing to an NRG roster that notably included Nick “mist” Costello.
Four months later Daniel achieved another runner-up finish in the first spring regional, however, the second half of 2022 saw consistently falling results for SSG which eventually led Daniel to make a shock move to Version1 in April 2023.
Version1’s first regional with Daniel ended with a very early exit before they upped their game at this weekend’s Spring Cup. In a very difficult string of games, V1 met three of the top four teams from the last regional, beating the reigning champions, Complexity, 3-1, OpTic Gaming 4-0, and Spacestation Gaming 4-1 to set up a grand final versus FaZe Clan.
Version1 and FaZe have quite a history against each other with V1 exiting two out of three global events last season—the Winter Major in March and World Championship in August—at FaZe’s hands.
Furthermore, FaZe includes both Sypical and mist, making this a particularly tense match for Daniel.
While the analyst desk predicted a FaZe bracket reset win, Version1 looked a league ahead of them with Daniel scoring a hattrick in game one and the title-winning goal in game five to close out the series, 4-1. V1 lost just three games in the entire regional.
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In an interview after the match Version1’s captain, Robert “comm” Kyser, credited the drastic improvement between regionals to them slipping back into more natural roles saying “comfort’s the most important thing… we know as long as we’re all comfortable, and we’re all playing well, we are just the better team against any team we’re gonna be playing.”
These confident words were certainly backed up by their performance. This was one of the most one-sided NA regionals since Gen.G’s win in Fall. Notably, Gen.G went on to win that split’s Major, meaning V1 just became a favorite to do the same.
With this win, V1 is now tied with Complexity at the top of the NA spring rankings with just the Spring Invitational regional left to go from June 16 to 18. Following this will be the Spring Major in July which they are very likely to qualify for.
As for Daniel in particular, his win mirrors that of Alexis “zen” Bernier’s European Open win last weekend very closely with both players being 16-year-old Rocket League wonder kids who just scored the winning goal to claim their first regional a year after coming of age. Fans have been comparing these two players for years and it looks like the Spring Major will finally pit these two rising giants against each other.
Published: May 21, 2023 09:45 pm