G2 Esports G2 Esports North America Rank #3 jawgemo Alexander Mor BABYBAY Andrej Francisty trent Trent Cairns valyn Jacob Batio leaf Nathan Orf has continued the run of sweeps to start the Champions Shanghai playoffs, taking down 100 Thieves 100 Thieves North America Rank #1 Cryocells Matthew Panganiban Asuna Peter Mazuryk vora Jordan Pulwer Timotino Timothée Lavigne Dupont bang Sean Bezerra 2-0 to hand the Americas Stage 2 winners their first defeat since early August, snapping a six-game winning streak.

In a matchup that has developed into a real rivalry over the years, the win also pushed G2 to 6-4 all-time against 100T. It would have been easy to predict a three-map series given the current map pool. While neither team has a trademark go-to map in the current map pool, both have proven to have settled into their own space in the current meta.

The series was played out on G2's Abyss and 100T's Ascent. G2 dominated Abyss 13-5 and then found the narrow advantage on Ascent, winning 13-11 thanks to a resilient attacker side.

While Abyss has historically been one of G2's more comfortable maps, 100T was set to play it for the first time since Americas Kickoff earlier this year. G2 went with its go-to double-Controller, double-Duelist comp with Astra-Harbor and Waylay-Neon, while 100T took on a similar approach to its Summit, plugging and playing a comp similar to its Breeze comp with Harbor as the lone Controller and Phoenix and Jett making up a double-Duelist pairing.

G2's defense had little to no trouble settling into the game, with a pistol round win to start helping boost an early 4-1 advantage. Led by the likes of trent and leaf , who had 13 and 12 kills in the half, respectively, that early lead was parlayed into an 8-4 halftime advantage.

A triple kill from trent seals the eco round win for G2.

100T did everything by the book to start its own defense side, picking up the pistol, but falling to a trademark G2 eco. A buy of four Stingers and one Sheriff was enough for the side to flip the second-half economy even on the wider map, opening the door to help G2 close things out 13-5.

After picking up an easy win on its map pick, 100T's pick of Ascent seemed sure to cause some problems for G2. The Stage 2 winners went 3-0 on the map last split, while G2 had banned it more times than it's played it since the start of Stage 2.

There were no surprises for either side in the comps, with 100T picking its Jett-Phoenix comp that brought the best out of players like Timotino and Asuna , while G2 went with a Vyse-Chamber double-Sentinel look that did the same for leaf and BABYBAY .

Asuna got going fast. On the historically defender-sided map, he was crucial in helping 100T chip away, going 17/7 on the team's attacker side to enter halftime tied at six rounds apiece. While it was G2's eco shenanigans that spelled the beginning of the end on Abyss, the thieves had their own tricks up their sleeves, pulling off a complete thrifty with just five Classics.

After the round loss, G2 had a mixed bag buy, with two Stingers, two pistols, and one force-bought Vandal. In the end, that buy ended up being enough. In a back-and-forth half in which neither team could settle into a groove for longer than three rounds at a time, heroics told the story of which team would walk away with the map.

An unreal 2v5 from BABYBAY and valyn converts a crucial round for G2.

Despite the best efforts of 100T's Duelist pair, which combined for 49 kills on the map, G2 closed out Ascent in style, claiming four of the final five rounds to secure a sweeping 2-0 victory.

trent paced the lobby on the day with 38 kills and a 1.28 rating, while Asuna and Timotino's 36 kills each were not enough in the losing effort.

After finishing 7th-8th at two straight Champions events, the win also secures a top-six finish for G2.

From the Press Room

G2 BABYBAY on the support in Shanghai: "I mean, I think we earn the crowd buff, you know? Like we every single match came out and we interact with the fans. We play our best. We have big moments, and we share those moments with the crowd. So, I feel like we earned the crowd buff, and we're going to keep that pushing, keep it going and just try to make everyone proud, including ourselves."

G2 head coach JoshRT : "Regional opponents are always crazier. There's a lot more mind games. We know each other so well. We even practice with each other, against each other. It's kind of funny that in this playoff bracket there's more Americas teams now. So it feels right. It just feels like we're in a good spot to try to capitalize on this moment because we know these opponents really well."

100T d00mbr0s on the loss: "G2 is on — for obvious reasons — a little bit of relaxation and roll, and they're playing very well. I think their style today was very slow, taking timings, doing personal plays, and when a team does that, it's very hard to play against. So I think we got cut off quite a lot against their moves, which we normally don't get... they were smart enough to change things up to make us feel uncomfortable especially on their attack."

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