The day before last we saw the Loser Bracket semi-finals take off, with [hade]HAVE IT defeating [SdS]SdS and [DCx]Justice League defeating [TKAG]Team Kagge. Honestly there isn't much surprise; any of these 4 teams are low Diamond Material and are constantly reaching the top of Gold. Yet again Team Kagge falls one game short, so that must be extremely hard for their team. SdS as well has been trying hard - since they fell back down to Gold from their run in Diamond they have been unable to gather the strength to push back into it. Whether it is due to not scrimming or life commitments, I hope that both these teams will be able to make it to Diamond at the end of Cycle 8. Although that does mean the season will be over, it gives everyone some break while the 4-11 tournament and the Grand Finals LAN in Las Vegas take place.
I talked to FrozenGoat, captain of Do You Even Lift Bro, about his team and how they've come back from where they originally started off a Gold team in Cycle 1 and being promoted to Diamond. Since then they have steadily declined to Bronze due to forfeits and have now risen back up to their former glory.
"We all have college and other commitments, after we reach Diamond I actually moved back to India where I'm originally from," FrozenGoat explained in an interview after his match. "My team was having a lot of trouble getting five members because we are not professional at all."
It's been a few months and he has had his break it seems, "I came back for my last semester of college and we remade our team," FrozenGoat continued in response. "We decided to start from Bronze again so we would get to play together before Gold because we don't really scrim or anything."
Then this goes to raise the question, how do you think you'll do in Diamond, do you actually have any expectations going in without scrimming I asked, will you also continue playing after season one of HoN Tour ends?
"Yes, hopefully if my job after college allows me I will keep playing. As for the expectations in Diamond, we go in with no expectation to be honest, we just will do our best and have fun with it," FrozenGoat finished saying. "Shoutout to Paisley, Calvin and Josh."
There you have it, words from the mysterious FrozenGoat himself, honestly I have not heard much from compared to other well known players so I cannot say too much else besides good luck and hopefully we can see some improvement from them if they ever decide to scrim and get serious about their team. Though it's nice to have a team who competes for fun at such a high level in the end.
More onto the important match happening today, we have our 3rd place match taking place, Justice League defeated HAVE IT in a quick 2-0 yesterday. Now they will be facing The Fire Rises for the chance to get to 2nd place, Justice League definitely wants this as they are still quite close to getting into the 4-11 tournament and a first place finish with a lucky run in Diamond could still net them that spot.
Speaking to BagInABox about his upcoming match he said, "Could go either way to be honest, I feel like the matches will definitely be even, but I have no predictions on who will take the series." Talking about the shock of them losing he said, "I am relatively surprised that they lost, from what I saw from their first game, it looked like they were playing outside of their usual roles because they were missing Xibbe."
That could definitely affect a team missing such a crucial player to their team so far, although iNsania assures me that this was good if anything for his team saying, "We're still running tryouts so it was his turn to sit out." I guess this means that they were just trying something in the end that wasn't turning out quite well. Although iNsania was disappointed with the results and how his team managed to throw away a 15k gold lead because it became extremely unserious and turned into a troll fest which let Do You Even Lift Bro to mount a comeback and take the series.
The winner of this match should be heavily favoured to win the finals despite being down one game as they come from the Losers Bracket. If The Fire Rises chooses to play the match seriously they should be the ones coming out on top with two quick and dominate series against Justice League and a rematch against Do You Even Lift Bro. Then again there is Justice League who sit in 16th place, just about 200 points behind [Pika]Pikachu currently, with a first or even second place win giving them 1000 for first and 700 for second they should be striving to be able to meet that benchmark.
It is getting close and considering the fact that [OTP]One Trick Pony and [PNIS]Pencils may both be disbanding that will open up two spots for the tournament. [AiD]Afraid and [xCet]Team Excellent sit below Pikachu currently with [C1K]Call It Karma and Justice League below them. Even [vdT]Vietnamese Dream is close only being 40 points behind Justice League currently, those final spots could go to anyone with points as close as this. In the end it depends on if One Trick Pony actually participate next cycle in Gold alongside the already secured [357]QsQ and the seeking Vietnamese Dream team. Pencils on the other hand is a but a rumour and mere speculation due to what happened in the Sound Blaster Heroes League Round of 16 match versus [LION]Lions eSportsKlubb. It would just be a shame to see these teams stay there with no intention of playing to prevent other teams from taking the spot. In the end we will need to wait and see what develops after the next bracket update and Cycle 8.
Matches on Wednesday, March 6th
Loser Bracket Semi Finals
HAVE IT 2:1 SdS
Justice League 2:1 Team Kagge
Matches on Thursday, March 7th
Winners Bracket Finals
Do You Even Lift Bro 2:1 The Fire Rises
Loser Bracket Round of Two
HAVE IT 0:2 Justice League
Matches on Friday, March 8th
Loser Bracket Finals
Justice League versus The Fire Rises
Final standings for Gold Cycle 7.
4th place - HAVE IT
3rd place - Loser of Loser Bracket Finals
2nd place - Loser of Gold Grand Finals
1st place - Winner of Gold Grand Finals
Shoutout to everyone who gets mad at blind bans in Midwars.
- "Crowslaw"
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