Cloud9 have remained alive at IEM Dallas following a 2-0 victory against Ninjas in Pyjamas in Group B’s lower bracket round two today. The men led by Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov will face Team Liquid at the end of the day for a spot in the quarterfinals.
The clean scoreboard may indicate that C9 had an easy game against the Ninjas, but it was not so simple. The Swedes pushed the Russian side to the limits on the first map of this CS:GO series, Vertigo, which went all the way to overtime. C9 wouldn’t have pulled off the 19-16 victory if it wasn’t for AWPer Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov. He held down the line when the game was at 14-14 and NiP had a man advantage in the A bombsite and was consistent throughout the whole game, which netted him a 33-18 K/D.
It seemed that the hard-fought loss on Vertigo broke NiP’s spirit coming into Overpass since they were constantly shut down by C9’s CT side. The Russians won 11 rounds on defense and conceded only one on the T side before closing out the map 16-5. Sh1ro again played an important role, having finished the map with a 23-9 K/D, only behind nafany. The captain was on fire throughout the whole map and got 32 kills in just 21 rounds of play.
Even though NiP did not make the playoffs this time, this can’t be considered a disappointing result. The Swedes had to play the event with academy player Erik “ztr” Gustafsson instead of in-game leader Hampus Poser, who is recovering from an illness. It was only natural that NiP would have a hard time reproducing the form they displayed at the PGL Antwerp Major, where they finished in the top eight.
C9 will face Liquid later today at 6pm CT for the last quarterfinal spot at IEM Dallas. The competition will be on break tomorrow and resume on Friday, June 3 with the start of the playoffs.
