The good, bad, and ugly of BLAST Premier Spring Series Group 3

BLAST Premier Spring Series Group 3 brings the group stage of the league to a close. Much like Group 2, we saw many upsets and witnessed two teams top the group that we didn't really expect to. We saw players return to their top form while witnessing top players underperform. 

The good

G2 is looking better than ever with their dominant performance in Group 3. The Kenny "kennyS" Schrub of old has returned with his insane flicks and dominance with the AWP. Nemanja "huNter-" Kovač further proved that the Kovač's need to be cloned. Audric "JaCKz" Jug and François "AmaNEk" Delaunay proved their doubters wrong with solid performances throughout the event. And, Nemanja "nexa" Isaković really stepped into his in-game leader role with great calls and strategies that resulted in G2 only dropping one map across their three series played. 

Though G2 didn't play Evil Geniuses, they did beat OG twice, who beat Evil Geniuses twice as well. G2 looks like a great team going into 2020, and that is a lot more than most expected.

Now, if G2 surpassed expectations, I'm not sure how to label the OG performance properly. I had OG coming to this event, losing four straight maps and getting sent to BLAST Showdown. But, OG came out as the Complexity of Group 3 with a second-place finish, beating favored team Evil Geniuses twice. Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen continues to prove his worth as an in-game leader. Valdemar "valde" Bjørn Vangså is back in top Astralis-caliber form now that he no longer has to in-game lead. And, Mateusz "mantuu" Wilczewski may be a rookie of the year top candidate if he continues on this run he's on. 

OG exceeded my expectations by leaps and bounds, and I think they will only continue to get better with time, and if they will keep quiet while Aleksib calls. 

The bad

Evil Geniuses came out flat in Group 3, like pancake flat. Evil Geniuses were the easy favorite to top Group 3, but they didn't even make it to the BLAST Premier Spring Series Final. They didn't come in last, which is a plus, I guess, but they definitely weren't the Evil Geniuses we saw in 2019. Were the majority of their losses to OG close? Yes, but OG isn't a team they should be getting taken all 30 rounds by nor a team they should be getting beat by. OG isn't a bad team, as they proved here, but they are a new and very young team while EG has been together longer and has more experienced and proven players on their roster. 

Their 2-0 win over 100 Thieves wasn't all that convincing, and they were the worst team at the event. Sure they beat them 16-4 on Train, but we all know how one-sided that map can be, especially for teams that struggle on T side. 100 Thieves took Evil Geniuses to overtime on their Nuke pick, which is more of a statement than the Train map. 

No one expected Evil Geniuses to get knocked down to BLAST Showdown, and the fact that they did is pretty concerning. It seems North America keeps producing unexpected results, whether they be insanely good or catastrophically bad. 

The ugly

100 Thieves looked like a complete mess at Group 3. 100 Thieves was the other team in Group 3 that was expected to make it to the BLAST Premier Spring Final, but they instead came in dead last. Most of their losses were close, I'll give them that, but that isn't near enough the expectations the community and fans had them living up to. 

The concerning thing about 100 Thieves' performance is that they didn't even have a single player that performed very well. Aaron "AZR" Ward was the only player to have above a 1.00 HLTV rating either series. The issue with that is that AZR is the in-game leader for 100 Thieves. He's not the main AWPer or the main fragger, and he's outperforming his teammates in those roles while strat calling in the server. 

It's hard to point at exactly what's going wrong in the 100 Thieves camp because there are so many areas that can be improved. Hopefully, 100 Thieves hit the lab hard to prepare for their rematch against G2 and IEM Katowice 2020 on February 24.