Na’Vi break 3-year curse and beat Team Liquid in a best-of-3, advance to IEM Katowice semifinals

Natus Vincere took down Team Liquid 2-0 today in IEM Katowice’s second quarterfinal.

The Russian CS:GO squad ended a three-year losing streak against Liquid in best-of-three series. Before today’s win, their last victory against the North Americans was at ESL One New York in October 2016. Na’Vi lost the following six best-of-three series against Liquid after that.

The star duo of s1mple and electronic contributed heavily to Na’Vi’s success against Liquid. On Dust II, the first map, they combined for 46 frags, 24 of which came from s1mple. The second-best player in the world in 2019 had an insane one-vs-four clutch when Liquid were in the lead. EliGE had 25 kills for Liquid even though Na’Vi won 16-11.

Some of the initial rounds on Mirage went down to the wire, but Na’Vi managed to win most of the clutches, including a one-vs-two from s1mple to close out the half. The Russians were ahead and almost let the game slip from their hands since Liquid were close to taking it to overtime. But flamie showed up when the team needed him most and nailed a one-vs-two clutch to take the series 16-13. He was the top-fragger for Na’Vi with 24 kills. Once again, EliGE was the top-fragger of the match, this time with 26 kills.

With Liquid out of the tournament, there are no more North American teams at IEM Katowice. Evil Geniuses and Cloud9 fell short and didn’t reach the playoffs.

Na’Vi will have another tough matchup tomorrow when they face Astralis in the second semifinal of the day at 11:55am CT. They beat the Danes at the BLAST Premier Spring Series earlier this month, but this time, Astralis seem more prepared.

You can keep track of the IEM Katowice results here.