G2 secure semi-final spot in Lisbon over FaZe

G2 have advanced to the semi-finals of BLAST Premier Spring Final 2022 after their 2-1 victory against FaZe in Group A’s winners’ match. Rémy “⁠XTQZZZ⁠” Quoniam and Aleksib turned FaZe‘s surprise pick of Ancient (16-13) against them before securing the reverse sweep on Dust2 (16-5).

FaZe failed to close the series on Ancient, meaning they will finish second in their group and will have to start their playoffs adventure in the quarter-final. Robert “⁠RobbaN⁠” Dahlström‘s men will face the third-placed team from Group B on Friday at 20:00 , which will be the winner of the match between Natus Vincere and BIG.

The series got started on G2‘s pick of Inferno and it quickly devolved into a nightmare for the Aleksib-led squad. FaZe secured the opening pistol and then proceeded to lock down both bombsites with a very aggressive CT side, winning 11 consecutive rounds as Robin “⁠ropz⁠” Kool shined while defending the A site. Despite Nikola “⁠NiKo⁠” Kovač‘s best efforts, G2 were only able to secure a couple of rounds before switching sides facing a 2-13 deficit. It was a half to forget for Ilya “⁠m0NESY⁠” Osipov, with the young AWPer registering a regrettable 1-14 K-D, but both Audric “⁠JACKZ⁠” Jug and Aleksib similarly failed to find impact.

Moving to the CT side allowed G2 to bounce back and they started by taking the pistol round. Unfortunately for them, a FaZe force buy on round 17 stopped the defenders’ streak before it could get started, leading to a 15-3 scoreline for Finn “⁠karrigan⁠” Andersen‘s men. G2‘s captain and Nemanja “⁠huNter-⁠” Kovač spearheaded a short-lived comeback before conceding the map 7-16.

G2 had a really good start to Ancient despite conceding the opening pistol, converting the following force buy to go 4-1 ahead in the early stages of the map. As FaZe struggled, Aleksib and NiKo powered the defense to a 9-6 advantage before moving to the second half. After a repeat of the first two rounds, FaZe were able to break the T economy and string five in a row to take the lead as Russel “⁠Twistzz⁠” Van Dulken started to find his form. However, they didn’t hold the advantage for long as Aleksib continued to lead from the front, propelling G2 to win six of the last seven rounds to bring the series even 16-13.

Aleksib was a force of nature on Ancient

Moving into the decider, G2 once again converted the second round after conceding the opening pistol before executing a confident and effective offensive half, made all the better by NiKo‘s incredible performance. FaZe failed to hold sites and were often forced to save on multiple occasions to salvage their economy. To make things worse, m0NESY had recovered from his slump in the first map, and was only behind NiKo on the scoreboard, even securing a 1v4 clutch on the last round of the half to seal an 11-4 lead for the Samurai. After switching sides, G2 only conceded one more round before taking the map 16-5.