Stage 2 of the Austin Major started yesterday and Team Falcons, despite facing much weaker opponents, lost their first two matches and are now one defeat away from elimination.
This is a very shocking result in light of the successes achieved by the team in the last few months. On paper, only Team Vitality and MOUZ should have been able to beat them. And yet they lost to B8 and Lynn Vision Gaming, two teams that aren’t even in the top 16.
Another shocking fact worth noting is that the matches weren’t even that close. The scores were 8 – 13 against B8 and 9 – 13 against LVG. Both times, Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov underperformed.
The good news for Falcons is that they will now get to play best-of-three matches until the end of stage 2, which means that one accidental map loss against an underdog will no longer result in a disastrous result.
However, they will need to win three consecutive matches to advance, which won’t be easy.
Other Results
The first day of the second stage of the Austin Major was dominated by four teams:
- FaZe Clan: 2 W – 0 L
- PaiN Gaming: 2 W – 0 L
- Virtus.pro: 2 W – 0 L
- Legacy: 2 W – 0 L
Given that FaZe will face Legacy in round 3, it’s probably safe to assume that they will advance to stage 3 with a perfect record.
It seems that Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev has finally found a team he can win with. He hasn’t yet returned to his peak form from before the break, but we did see him working his magic here and there.
At the other extreme, we have Team Falcons, OG, MIBR, and BetBoom Team. All four of them lost their first two matches and are now in a bad position. Unfortunately for OG and Falcons, they will meet each other later today and the loser is out of the tournament.
The remaining eight teams finished day 1 of stage 2 with mixed results:
- FURIA: 1 W – 1 L
- TYLOO: 1 W – 1 L
- 3DMAX: 1 W – 1 L
- B8: 1 W – 1 L
- HEROIC: 1 W – 1 L
- Nemiga Gaming: 1 W – 1 L
- M80: 1 W – 1 L
- LVG: 1 W – 1 L
