LPL CS:GO ANZ Championship: Grand Final Wrap-Up

The LPL CSGO ANZ Championship Season 1 comes to an end with a nail-biting grand final between AVANT and Ground Zero. Some technical issues plagued Ground Zero, but they still put up a great fight against the top-seed from the round robin stage.

Mirage (16-6 AVANT)

The first map was Ground Zero’s pick of Mirage and it looked even…for a little while. AVANT were up 3-2 after the fifth round and that was the last time Ground Zero would see the score being so close as ap0c and soju_j put on an insane performance for AVANT. It felt like AVANT were able to stop any attack that Ground Zero threw at them and they posted a score of 10-5 at the half.

From this scoreline it was going to be hard for Ground Zero to come back and then with AVANT winning pistol round, and the next 3 rounds, it was near impossible. zemp wasn’t going to give up easy and fought until the final round, but even with that Ground Zero only won 1 round in the second half. AVANT put them out of their misery and ended the first map with a strong 16-6.

The biggest contributing factor was probably the fact that in 22 rounds, AVANT got the opening kill in 15 of those rounds. Ground Zero wasn’t allowed to start rolling or mount any form of comeback because they were constantly fighting from a 5v4 situation.

Train (19-15 AVANT)

If things were not already looking bad for Ground Zero heading into AVANT’s map pick, MoycQ’s internet started having issues. Luckily Ground Zero were able to pull Fighting 4 Freedom’s pecks to substitute for the game, but it still wasn’t going to be easy.

The T-Side of Train is typically weaker side, and Ground Zero were fighting with a stand-in, so it was really surprising to see them take the lead early on and maintain it. zemp again was the stand-out player on Ground Zero as they kept picking up rounds in the first half, often coming down to bomb explosion. In the end Ground Zero shocked everyone and won the half 9-6.

In the second half MoeycQ was able to re-join the game and Ground Zero kept their momentum by winning the pistol round. From there it was all downhill as AVANT were coming back and won 9 of the next 10 rounds and were able to secure map and match point 15-11, thanks again to the powerhouse of ap0c. All AVANT needed to do was close out the game with 1 more round and they just couldn’t do it as Ground Zero where clawing to keep themselves in the game and they managed to force an overtime.

Sadly, that would be the last surprise that Ground Zero could pull off as we headed into overtime AVANT turned the dial up to 11 and just dominated, winning the first 4 rounds, the map, the match and the LPL CSGO ANZ Championship.

This article was originally published on Esports Kingdom. 
Written by: Grady Hooker
Image credit: HLTV

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