The second match of North America’s Last Chance Qualifiers had all sorts of tension, as XSET and Luminosity Gaming faced off to get one step closer to the last NA spot in Champions.
Haven was definitely LG’s map and the 13-2 scoreline sure shows it. This map was XSET’s pick, but XSET weren’t able to get anything done. Tanner “TiGG” Spanu came on very aggressively, taking away XSET’s ability to control the timing of the match. XSET were constantly pushed on and unprepared for the pressure LG were putting on them.
IGL Rory “dephh” Jackson had a big task ahead of him after their loss on Haven, a map they typically do well on. They were facing Ascent, which was described as LG’s “bread and butter” by casters. He and the team had to put Haven behind them.
“I think Haven is one of those maps where it’s all about confidence. You have to scale quickly, you have to scale well. Obviously, our first [map] was full of jitters. I think Haven was maybe was a bad pick from us. … We’re definitely not scared to play Haven again, we’re going to pick it,” dephh said in a post-match interview.
Ascent started in favor of XSET, but LG were able to take a few rounds and disallowed any sort of snowballing. The half ended 8-4 and XSET’s confidence started to show the more rounds they took. Bryce “PureR” Lovell and Brendan “BcJ” Jensen had some amazing clutches and were able to turn the tides on rounds that weren’t going their way. The map ended 13-8 in favor of XSET, sending them to map three.
On Split, both teams were able to run away with a few rounds in a row. LG started off with the first round, but XSET were able to take four straight rounds from them until LG finally turned the tides and took the next six. The half ended 7-5 with LG on top, but XSET came back from the break hungry. They let the first round slip away from them, but this wasn’t surprising since they lost all but one of the pistol rounds.
After the pistol round, XSET took four straight rounds, gave up another two, and took the final four rounds to end the map 13-10 and win the match 2-1.
XSET went on to immediately play 100 Thieves in order to take the next step in the Last Chance Qualifier in hopes of securing the last NA spot for Champions.
