The good, bad, and ugly of BLAST Premier Spring Series 2020 Group 1

BLAST Premier Spring Series Group 1 has come to a close giving us a first-look at some of the top teams in competitive CS:GO. We entered 2020 unsure of how good FaZe, NiP, and MIBR were going to be. It seems some of that uncertainty has been answered while presenting us with new ones. 

The good

FaZe finally show life after a horrendous 2019. I was a FaZe doubter going into this event, but they proved me, and many others, wrong in their performance. Going into this event, Liquid was the clear favorite. But, FaZe destroyed them in the two series they faced off against one another. FaZe seems to be back on top, and that's pretty exciting.

NiP had very little time to prepare for this event since they lost long-time member Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg and acquired young-gun Tim "nawwk" Jonasson just a little over a week before the event started. Despite this short amount of time, they had a pretty good showing. It's going to be exciting to watch them develop throughout the year with more practice. 

The bad

Liquid did not look like the same team from the end of 2019. They did make it to the finals, but honestly, anything less than that would have been abysmal. Liquid was heavily favored in this group to be the winner but didn't have convincing wins with any team in the pool. They went to double overtime with a weak MIBR, went to single overtime with a new NiP team, and got destroyed by FaZe in both series. The Liquid from the summer of 2019 would have run through this pool with ease, expect maybe FaZe, but instead struggled through it and lost in the end. 

The ugly

MIBR continues to struggle, which is saddening. They didn't win a single series of this event and only won one map. Losing to NiP came as a big surprise to me, and I truly expected more out of them.