Liquid sweep AVANGAR; through to EPICENTER semifinals
Liquid continued the dominance displayed against Swole Patrol yesterday with a pummeling of CIS side AVANGAR today, seeing themselves through to the semifinals of the event, along with Natus Vincere.
Mirage went down without a hitch for Liquid as they started the game with a pistol round win, while winning the subsequent rounds would put them up 5-0 before AVANGAR would win their first round. Unfortunately for AVANGAR the time expired the next round, restarting their economy and putting them down 8-1 until their next round win.
With another three round win streak Liquid put the map to 11-2 before the Kazakhstanis put together their first round win streak of two to put the half 11-4 in favor of the Americas. Putting themselves at 12-4 with the second pistol round won, AVANGAR would only find a single round in the second half, and Liquid would win out 16-5.
For the first time at EPICENTER, Liquid would win a game allowing more than five rounds from their opponent as AVANGAR were able to pressure Liquid all the way to a 16-8 on Inferno.
The first half came up all Liquid as they were able to handily shut down the AVANGAR CT defense, making sure even Aidyn "KrizzeN" Turlybekov was held without a single frag throughout the entire first half. Liquid would go on to win 13 of 14 rounds in the first before AVANGAR would snake the last round away from them, ending the half 13-2.
AVANGAR started to heat up on their T-side, all of their round wins coming off the back of bombs exploding. Ali "Jame" Djami and co. were able to win six of seven rounds but once the game reached 14-8, Liquid had enough and closed the game out 16-8.
AVANGARLiquid| AVANGAR |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Dzhami 'Jame' Ali |
23 - 31 | -8 | 67.4 | 62.2% | 0.91 |
 Timur 'buster' Tulepov |
26 - 34 | -8 | 67.7 | 62.2% | 0.85 |
| Bektiyar 'fitch' Bahytov |
25 - 37 | -12 | 58.5 | 60.0% | 0.76 |
| Aidyn 'KrizzeN' Turlybekov |
17 - 32 | -15 | 44.3 | 62.2% | 0.67 |
| Alexey 'Qikert' Golubev |
9 - 30 | -21 | 39.4 | 42.2% | 0.48 |
| Liquid |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken |
37 - 23 | +14 | 85.3 | 88.9% | 1.39 |
 Nick 'nitr0' Cannella |
33 - 20 | +13 | 88.3 | 82.2% | 1.39 |
| Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski |
35 - 23 | +12 | 84.2 | 73.3% | 1.35 |
 Epitacio 'TACO' de Melo |
32 - 20 | +12 | 71.5 | 82.2% | 1.33 |
| Keith 'NAF' Markovic |
26 - 15 | +11 | 55.7 | 86.7% | 1.16 |
Liquid have now earned a bye in the semifinals, where they will await their opponent being the winner between FaZe and Ninjas in Pajamas. AVANGAR now greets HellRaisers in the quarterfinals to see who will post up against Na'Vi in the semis.
The bracket will look as such:
| Quarterfinals | Time | Date | ||
 HellRaisers |
vs. | AVANGAR |
6AM EDT | Oct. 27th |
 NiP |
vs. |  FaZe |
10AM EDT | Oct. 27th |
| Semifinals | ||||
 Na'Vi |
vs. | winner of HR/AV | 5:30AM EDT | Oct. 28th |
 Liquid |
vs. | winner of NiP/FaZe | 8:30AM EDT | Oct. 28th |
