The second semi finals match featured Team EnVyUs and Ninjas in Pyjamas. Both teams came to Romania with a big expectations, however the XXX squad came out on top with their great performance in this match.
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Following the first match of the day between Fnatic and Team Solomid, Team EnVyUs and Ninjas in Pyjamas took to the stage to vie for superiority. Both considered among the top 3 teams in the world, nV and NiP were both looking for a win in Bucharest after their recent slumps in performance.
The map selection phase was rather interesting, nV banned de_nuke, one of the NiP's the strongest maps, while NiP removed de_overpass. nV went for de_cache pick, while NiP decided to go with de_dust2. The second banning phase brought the removal of de_cobblestone by nV and de_inferno by NiP. This veto process left de_mirage as the third map.
Starting the match, the Swedes won the knife round on cache and decided to start on the Terrorist side. This was a rather interesting choice because the CT side usually considered as a more favored side to start out on. But, as the match started NiP took an early lead of 6-1. nV managed to win the second round, but NiP didn't allowed them to shake the momentum which they had from the pistol round. Breaking the early T side streak of NiP, nV won a four consecutive rounds after that to bring the score closer. However, the Swedish team still managed to finish the first half with a small lead of 8-7. The second half brought a new T side streak. This time nV was in the driver's seat, as they stomped their way in and took an 11-8 lead. NiP couldn't really recover from this, as their economy was consistently broken, and in the end nV won this map 16-10.
The second map of this best-of-three series, de_dust2, brought us one of the longest competitive matches. nV won a knife round and started off on CT side where they quickly scored a few rounds taking an early lead. NiP was looking a bit clueless and it seemed like nV was set to take an easy win. But, NiP wouldn't be one of the best teams if they couldn't make a comeback. Before the first half was closed, NiP managed to get on board with 7 rounds. The second half was back and forth where eventually we could see a overtime. It all wouldn't really be awkward if we didn't just witness a quad overtime. Both teams were going 3-2 on their CT side, where finally in the last overtime NiP had a 4-1 run on their T side which was closed with a good CT peformance for the final 36-33.
NiP opened very well de_mirage by winning five consecutive rounds on CT side. nV finally got on board in the 6th round of this map, but this didn't pushed back NiP as they continued their dominating performance on CT side by taking a 7-4 lead. But, from this point on the French team started speeding up and made a comeback which did put them in a 7-8 situation as they were moving over to the CT side. However, NiP won the second pistol round as well and were just playing a perfect game where they were destroying nV's economy and the French squad was forced over and over to do the force buys where in the end the Swedish team came out on the top. NiP will now face TSM in the winners bracket finals, while EnVyUs will clash with Fnatic in the lowers bracket.
Day 2 schedule:
11.00 CET - Fnatic vs EnVyUs - Lowers bracket round 1
14.00 CET - Team Solomid vs Ninjas in Pyjamas - Winners bracket finals
18.00 CET - Lowers bracket finals
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