OpTic Texas earned their first victory of the 2023 Call of Duty League campaign with a dominating 3-0 performance against the Florida Mutineers.
Just two days after their extremely controversial match with the Minnesota ROKKR on Friday that saw OpTic forfeit rather than replay a map because of a killstreak glitch, OpTic rebounded in a big way. The team could have easily allowed the disappointment of Friday’s events to linger, but to their credit, the veteran-laden team was completely dialed in for their matchup with the Mutineers.
In the first match of the series, Mercado Las Almas Hardpoint, Shotzzy and Dashy were all over the map in the slaying category, with the duo combining for 50 kills to just 34 deaths.
Scump, who announced earlier in the offseason the 2023 season would be his last, chipped in with a 21-17 performance en route to a 250-202 victory for Texas.
If the first map in this series was all about Shotzzy and Dashy, the series’ second map, Embassy Search and Destroy, was all about iLLeY and Scump. iLLeY made massive plays throughout the map with the sniper rifle in his hands.
Facing a 3-2 round deficit, OpTic found themselves with a three-vs-two advantage. Even with the player advantage, iLLeY needed no help, landing a headshot onto Brack and then taking down Vikult to bring it to a 3-3 count. Scump made massive plays throughout the series, leading his team with a 11-6 statline on the way to a 6-3 victory to take a commanding 2-0 lead.
In the series’ third and final map, Hotel Control, OpTic were suffocating on defense and opportunistic in their lone attacking round. It appeared Florida were going to tie the round count at one apiece before OpTic made clutch play after play, ending with Texas stacking the point to clinch the round and take a two-round advantage.
In the map’s final round, Florida had an opening to clinch the B point and were just a sliver of progress away from getting the series to a fourth round. But, a flurry of Texas players flooded the point and stopped their progress, allowing time to run out and end the map and series.
A 3-0 victory is as good as OpTic could have hoped for following the controversy on Friday and it speaks to the leadership within the team and org.
Florida will return to action next week on Friday, Dec. 9 at 3.30pm CT when they take on Minnesota. OpTic will take on the defending CDL champions, Los Angeles Thieves, on Sunday, Dec. 11 at 5pm CT.
