Evil Geniuses may have been the top seed heading into The International 2022 main event, but South American Dota 2 teams never care about the odds. Thunder Awaken walked into the opening day of playoffs with a chance to make history and grasped that opportunity with lighting-coated hands.
Despite the early dominance, fans had some hesitations about picking EG as a favorite, and TA provided those doubts correct as they aggressively tossed the final North American team into the lower bracket with a 2-0 win.
Not only is this an incredible start to TA’s upper bracket run since it guarantees them a top-six spot at the event, but they have already locked in SA’s highest placement ever at an iteration of TI.
Prior to this, beastcoast’s current roster held that honor when they finished seventh under the Infamous banner back at TI9 in 2019. And, with how strong TA has looked in the last several games, there is a real chance this run could go even further.
In both games against EG, TA was able to hold strong through the early phases to keep EG from building any advantage before quickly turning things to their favor on the back of excellent communication and ability usage centered around teamfights.
Game one was a strange draft but EG likely felt good about their chances with Arteezy getting ahold of Shadow Fiend, a hero with which he has a 74.7 percent winrate on over 96 games in his career. But, that pick would pale in comparison to TA’s Zeus/Bloodseeker combo and again to a duo of Tiny and Morphling in game two where TA really ran away with things.
It also doesn’t help EG was on the receiving end of the patented Kyle Dota curse.
Now EG is only one game away from being eliminated from TI11 entirely, which would put a big damper on the strong group stage should they fail to beat their 9th-place finish from TI10.
They will be playing the winner of Hokori and beastcoast, which means SA might truly be the downfall of NA if things go south in the Dota 2 tourney.
