Vitality continue bleeding as BIG enter EMEA Challengers
Naim "EnKay" Rosinski
01/16/2022
BIG have defeated Team Vitality in the lower bracket final of VCT Europe 2022 – Stage 1 Challengers 1 closed qualifiers. The win sees Team Vitality suffer another sweep following their upper bracket 0-3 defeat to Guild Esports just the day before.
BIG’s road to EMEA Challengers
Similarly to the already qualified Guild Esports, BIG kicked off their journey in the European qualifier from the open qualifications. The long road ahead saw BIG storm through the open qualifiers, defeating LDN UTD in a heated final, where they pulled off a reverse sweep to advance to the closed qualifier.
The closed qualifier saw Fatih “gob b” Dayik’s squad defeat Alliance in another 2-1 encounter. Then, in the upper bracket semifinals, BIG suffered their first loss. An extremely close match that went the distance saw Vitality drop BIG to the lower bracket, making their lives a little harder. However, BIG rallied by first overcoming TENSTAR, and then once again Alliance. All that was left was the lower bracket best-of-five finale against the team that defeated them before, Vitality.
Lower bracket final
Seeking blood after the upper bracket semifinals defeat, BIG went into the matchup guns blazing. An extremely easy victory on Breeze (13:3) showed that the German squad is not messing about. Nico “Obnoks” Garczarczyk on Skye was menacing with 24 kills in just 16 rounds.
Ascent was up next and this time around, Vitality came to play. A tight 7:5 half lead for Vitality was however, rather quickly forgotten as BIG cranked the heat on defense with Obnoks and Karel “Twisten” Ašenbrener taking charge. A joint 4k from gob b and Obnoks saw BIG deny Vitality from forcing overtime, and instead grant themselves the victory on Ascent at 13:11.
Finally, it was time for Split. Vitality had to pull out all the stops if they wanted to avoid yet another sweep. An equal 6:6 foreshadowed what was to come as neither team was letting go, leading to OT. There, a quadruple overtime ensued before finally, BIG snagged a round on their attack side and take home the 16:14 victory. And with that, guarantee themselves a spot in the EMEA Challengers alongside Guild Esports.
With the loss, Vitality has been dropped to the second and last VALORANT closed qualifier in Europe. Luckily, they will not have to go through the open qualifiers. Despite that, some nasty competition awaits, including G2 Esports.
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