Bilibili stun NRG 2-0 in Group C opener

Bilibili Gaming Bilibili Gaming China Rank #7 B3ar Yang Zhanxiong (杨瞻雄) whzy Wang Haozhe (王昊哲) Levius Lu Yinzhong (卢胤中) Knight Liu Yuxiang (刘宇翔) Yosemite Wang Lei (王磊) Biank Zhong Jianfei (钟剑飞) have swept NRG Esports NRG Esports North America Rank #3 crashies Austin Roberts Victor Victor Wong Marved Jimmy Nguyen Ethan Ethan Arnold Demon1 Max Mazanov in their opening match of Valorant Champions 2023, marking the first time a Chinese team has won its opening match at an international LAN.

“BLG is unbeatable,” Biank said.

EDward Gaming EDward Gaming China Rank #1 ZmjjKK Zheng Yongkang (郑永康) nobody Wang Senxu (王森旭) Muggle Tang Shijun (唐时俊) CHICHOO Wan Shunji (万顺治) Smoggy Zhang Zhao (张钊) Haodong Guo Haodong (郭浩东) , Attacking Soul Esports Attacking Soul Esports Inactive monk Wang Haoyu (王浩宇) Yuicaw Huang Yung-chieh (黃湧傑) YHchen Chen Yuhan (陳昱瀚) Zero1 Meng Zhen Ren (任梦真) , and FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #2 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) Lysoar Liang Youhao (梁优好) ZiXuan Liu Junwei (刘俊伟) have historically been unable to win their opening matches at international LANs. EDG were the closest team to achieve that feat, but were ultimately outlasted by T1 T1 Korea Rank #3 Sayaplayer Ha Jeong-woo (하정우) Rossy Daniel Abedrabbo Carpe Lee Jae-hyeok (이재혁) iZu Ham Woo-ju (함우주) xccurate Kevin Susanto in Japan. BLG have now taken China's first opening win at an international event, and have done so in flawless fashion.

whzy made a similar comment to his teammate, stating NRG are a top three team worldwide. “Does that mean, after today, we are a top four team?”

He made sure his team got it done cleanly, with impressive Judge play throughout Split. He found most of his 31 frags with the Judge, even pushing through NRG's spawn, at 10-4 on attack, to drop four. NRG later recovered four rounds — exclusively through individual plays, among which a 4K from FiNESSE 's own Judge — but were unable to keep the momentum going. Another two 3Ks from whzy and the map and match were over with a 13-8.

“Maybe [NRG] didn't expect we were going to have these kinds of strategies,” whzy said of his Judge play. “I feel like around there the opponent's team was a bit messy, maybe they didn't manage to have very good preparation towards that.”

whzy's over-the-top 31 frags and 1.74 rating were in compensation for his Lotus performance, where he barely reached a 1.00 rating. BLG as a whole struggled throughout Lotus, despite winning the map. They were forced to come from behind and force overtime, while NRG won the first five rounds, both pistols, the first bonus, and went 21-5 in duels. Ultimately, BLG won Lotus 14-12 to set up their match-winning Split run.

BLG's win on Lotus was as disappointing for NRG as it was rough for BLG, the result stinging all the more when taking into account individual stats. s0m opened the map with an ace on the second round, later finding the second-highest ACS of the server at 241. Victor had the second-best rating of 1.18, and won eight opening duels on top of that. ardiis had the highest ADR of the map.

In the end, none of these things mattered. By the time the match was over, the only statistic an NRG player was superior on was assists, where FNS totalled 24. The team itself was confused, with Chet saying he had “no idea what happened today.”

The man of the hour today. (Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)

“I just don't know how we lost, to be honest. We won both pistols and we had 21 first bloods. The fact that it even went close to overtime… I don't know how that happened,” ardiis said of Lotus. “On Split, they were a bit aggressive. Maybe too confident. I think they were the better team.”

One of the standout traits of this Group C opening match was BLG's playstyle which, on Lotus, largely relied on unexpected plays and often pushing through smokes. On Split, it relied on a very fast tempo and an aggressive playstyle.

“Many of them are just incidents, decisions we make inside the game. Some of the choices or some of the strategies, maybe, we have already prepared before today's game,” Knight elaborated. “But I would like to say many of them we just make it [during] the game.”

And NRG were not able to keep up with it.

“I think we had some decent reads on our defense [as well], but we weren't able to capitalize on kills a lot of the time. And even if we did, we got a lot of man-up advantages but — just couldn't close,” FiNESSE explained. “We had some pretty bad site holds even when we had a lot of people there, and their site hits are really good. We just kind of didn't take as much time as we maybe should have, in hindsight.”

BLG seem fully aware and extremely confident of the position they have put themselves in. Even if the team is set to match up against either the Pacific LCQ winners, who come off a hot run, or the uncontested best team in the world right now, their confidence is sky high and even took shots at Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Rank #29 Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le Apoth Vincent Le jawgemo Alexander Mor ' Boostio for his recent comments about Chinese Valorant.

“Maybe if Boaster was in EG, maybe they would not be runners-up [at Masters Tokyo],” Knight said.

As a team, Bilibili were more reserved than whzy and Biank. When asked about their own performance, coach Jexen chalked up the win to their preparation. Similarly, Knight highlighted whzy's performance but also the entire team's display against NRG.

“I feel like, although I'm the energy of the team, this will definitely not affect my own performance. I'm also quite confident with my own personal strengths and mechanics, I would just like to seek more opportunities in the actual game to help the team,” Bianka later said in a more reserved comment.

NRG's only solace is history. The last two times the team's core lost the opening match of an international LAN were at Masters Reykjavik and Masters Copenhagen, both in 2022. At Copenhagen, the core, then playing for OpTic Gaming OpTic Gaming Inactive , finished third. At Reykjavik, they won the title.

FNATIC have won the second Group C opener, against ZETA DIVISION, and will face Bilibili tomorrow, in the winner's final of the group, while the loser will have to lock horns with NRG in the elimination match come August 11.