Olivia R. July 16, 2019
Team Liquid beat FaZe Clan 2-0 to win the BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles.
The North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team now has five consecutive premier trophy wins under its belt. With a 9-0 map record at the most recent CSGO event, Team Liquid is next setting their sights on IEM Chicago.
The series started off with FaZe choosing a map that they completely failed on during the previous day. The team struggled throughout the first half of the game, resulting in an 11-4 lead for Team Liquid. FaZe also faltered on the pistol round, but were nearly able to even the score.
Liquid won three rounds in a row in response. FaZe again turned the game around when Ladislav "GuardiaN" Kovacs pulled off a 1v2 clutch in the lower bombsite at map point. FaZe pushed to overtime from there, but TL's Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski shut down the comeback and sealed a map win with a clutch 1v3.
Team Liquid returned to a more dominant form on Inferno. Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken excited the crowd as he took on the A bombsite alone with an AK-47. Twistzz had racked up 25 kills in only one half of play, and TL raced out to a 9-6 lead.
In the second half of Inferno, Keith "NAF" Markovic wiped out the entire FaZe roster. The ace player's first three kills were done while almost completely blind. This led to the European team's swift defeat. Team Liquid took the map, and the title, with a 16-6 finish.
Liquid was rewarded with $125,000 for the victory while FaZe received $50,000 as runners-up from the event's prize pool. Liquid is leading the BLAST Pro Series leaderboard with 26 points. Astralis is following close behind with 22, while FaZe is in third place at 20.