Underdogs
KRÜ Esports
KRÜ Esports
Latin America South
Rank #3
keznit
Angelo Mori
Klaus
Nicolas Ferrari
Shyy
Fabian Usnayo
Melser
Marco Eliot Machuca Amaro
heat
Olavo Marcelo
defeated long-time scrim partner
Cloud9
Cloud9
North America
Rank #9
Xeppaa
Erick Bach
runi
Dylan Cade
moose
Kaleb Jayne
vanity
Anthony Malaspina
OXY
Francis Hoang
2-1 in the upper bracket final of the VCT Americas Last Chance Qualifier. KRÜ will advance to the grand final where they will face the winner of the lower bracket final for a chance to make Champions 2023. Meanwhile, Cloud9 have dropped down to the lower bracket final where they will face off against
Leviatán
Leviatán
Latin America South
Rank #1
tex
Ian Botsch
kiNgg
Francisco Aravena
Mazino
Roberto Rivas
aspas
Erick Santos
C0M
Corbin Lee
.
During the map selection, Cloud9 banned Bind and Split, spelling trouble for KRÜ, a team that relied on Raze-favored maps to gain an advantage over their opponents to this point in the tournament.
Cloud9 proceeded to dominate KRÜ 13-4 on KRÜ's comfort pick Ascent, but KRÜ came back with a 13-4 demolishing of their own on Cloud9's map pick Pearl. In the deciding map of the series, Haven, KRÜ took the map 13-6. This marked the first time KRÜ won Haven in VCT Americas.
Nicolas "Klaus" Ferrari of KRU Esports reacts while competing (Photo by Chris Betancourt/Riot Games)
On their Ascent defense, Cloud9 completely shut down KRÜ's star duelist keznit with their Killjoy and double-controller composition. In the first half of the map, keznit's first kill to first death ratio was 0:6.
Following their 8-4 half, Cloud9 won Ascent with a flawless attack side. Individual plays shone in the final two rounds of the map, and Zellsis and runi clutched their respective 1v2s to bring the map home.
The Jett differential was real on Ascent: Leaf ended top-frag with a 20/12/6 KDA while keznit ended bottom-frag with a 7/15/6 KDA.
Expectations were low for KRÜ going into Pearl, but the LATAM team kept their head in the game and won the pistol round. Then they won their anti-eco round. Then they won their bonus round. KRÜ steamrolled their early lead into an incredible 12-0 half.
After halftime, the crowd could be heard chanting 13-0 for KRÜ. Ever the contrarian, leaf refused to let his team become the second in VCT Americas to succumb to a 13-0 loss. He won a 1v3 in a post-plant scenario to secure a round for Cloud9.
Off the back of leaf's heroics, Cloud9 managed to start a small four round win streak. But the deficit was too great for even the Americas' second seed, and they lost the map to KRÜ 13-4.
Unlikely top frag NagZ went 19/4/7 on Viper and ended Pearl with a 280 ACS.
Haven began with an explosive 5v5 retake scenario where leaf stuck the defuse while the rest of Cloud9 took the fight to KRÜ in mid. However, after taking the pistol and anti-eco rounds, Cloud9 struggled against KRÜ's clinical gun round performances and ended the half down 8-4.
The same scenario repeated on Cloud9's offense. The boys in blue won their pistol round and anti-eco rounds but couldn't gain a footing in the gun rounds. At the same time, the players on KRÜ were firing on all cylinders. Round 15 was flawless, followed by an intelligent flank play in round 16.
On round 18, runi won a bitter 1v3 with a Sheriff after KRÜ had already taken over the A Site and defused the spike. Then DaveeyS pulled off a 1v2 against a double-face on C site to the sound of thunderous applause, bringing his team to map point.
Not even a C9 timeout could stop KRÜ's momentum. NagZ and daveeyS, KRÜ's sentinels, fearlessly committed to a 2v3 retake against the enemy's Viper ult. NagZ brought it down to a 2v1, and dAveeys landed his Tour De Force on runi with 1 HP remaining to seal the series.
On stage, the KRÜ players were all smiles. Just one week ago, they were 0-9 in the regular season, the bottom of the barrel in the Americas region. Now they were on their way to the LCQ grand finals, where they were just one win away from punching a ticket to Champions.
“For me personally, I try to be very calm in the post-series because I don't want my mental to affect my gameplay,” DaveeyS said in his post-match interview. “But for now I am just looking forward to the finals. And when I win it, I will, of course, celebrate. Until then, I will stay calm.”
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