VCJ Split 1 Playoff: NORTHEPTION vs Murash Gaming
NTH Brief Information: NORTHEPTION basically had to rebuild their entire roster after a middle-of-the-pack performance in 2023, but the rebuild has shown to push out impressive performances. They came out third in the regular season, just barely missing out on the direct ticket to the finals spot to REJECT. Esperanza just woke up after their first 2 losses and just started to shred nearly everyone in his way, as he consistently top fragged nearly every series. Wolverine and Thiefy also look like extremely strong fraggers. This team looks to be extremely strong, and I could see them making it to the offline event and potentially making an upset against the two finalists.
MRG Brief Information: Murash Gaming is most known for being owned by a legendary Japanese streamer Junichi Kato. In the regular season, however, they didn't have the best of luck. They barely scraped by as the lowest seeded team to qualify for playoffs. However, they did have some occasional blowout map wins against some of the other teams in the league, and actually beat out NORTHEPTION with a 13-1 Lotus game pretty early on. Absol is definitely their standout player, and their youngest by a pretty large margin (IIRC he's only 17 while their next youngest Biju is 26). Reita also puts out some strong performances coming from DFM, which shows he still got plenty of experience playing in Tier 1 that came in handy playing in Challengers. MRG definitely have the resources needed to make a good run, but only time will tell if they have the firepower needed to do that.
NTH Players to Watch: Esperanza has been cooking for most of the regular season and looks to extend that streak to the playoffs. Wolverine and Thiefy also look very strong individually.
MRG Players to Watch: Absol and Reita were pretty much keeping this team in playoff contention the entire regular season. million also had some strong performances here and there as well.
Prediction: NTH should take this pretty easily 2-0
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