Behind a raucous home crowd, OpTic Texas dominated the Seattle Surge by a count of 3-0 today to advance to the second round of the winners bracket at the Call of Duty League’s first major event of the season.
OpTic started their 2022 campaign with back-to-back demoralizing losses in game five, round 11 scenarios. Since then, the Green Wall have rattled off four straight victories, dropping a single map in that time. It appears Texas are finally rounding into form after many picked the team to compete for the CDL Championship.
Scump, OpTic’s longtime superstar, credits the team’s turnaround to the extra hours they have been putting in since Vanguard released last fall.
“We’ve just been in the lab. We’ve been working so, so hard. I’m sure you guys can see that with our gameplay. We’ve been trying to polish everything that was going wrong for us,” he said after the impressive victory. “We’ve just been working really hard. We’ve been getting on an hour early before practice since the game came out. Really happy that it’s showing. We’ve just been putting in a lot of work.”
Scump was one of three OpTic members to go positive tonight. He, Shotzzy, and Dashy posted 1.07, 1.20, and 1.37 K/Ds, respectively. Dashy had one of the best performances of the 2022 season thus far. He went an absurd 40-20 in the Tuscan Control, helping OpTic close out the series with the 3-2 map victory.
After the rough start, OpTic have looked like one of the best teams in the league. They have won 3-0 three out of their last four matches and appear to have found their groove. Texas should be one of the favorites the rest of the tournament and now sit one match away from the winners bracket finals.
After starting the season with a 3-0 record, Seattle have now lost three series in a row. They have cooled off considerably and will now need to make a losers bracket run to get to Championship Sunday. The team’s two SMG players put up solid statlines, with Mack and Pred posting 1.03 and 1.07 K/Ds. But the team’s AR players struggled to slay at the same level OpTic got from Dashy.
OpTic will face the defending CDL champs, Atlanta FaZe, on Saturday, March 5 at 3:30pm CT. This is the first matchup in the storied rivalry since last season when OpTic knocked off FaZe in the 2021 Stage Five qualifiers.
Seattle now drop down to the losers bracket, where they’ll take on the Paris Legion tomorrow at 6:30pm CT to try to keep their Major hopes alive.
