Sprout won 2:0 against Evil Geniuses at IEM Katowice. By doing so, they eliminated EG from the play-in of the tournament. Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) Katowice is a Polish CS:GO event that takes place from February 1-12 and has a prize pool of $1 million.
Sprout vs. Evil Geniuses
Sprout got off to a dominant start in the match on Ancient and gained an advantage. After trailing by two points, the Evil Geniuses then took a 9-6 halftime lead to keep their hopes alive of snatching the map away from Sprout. EG’s Jerric “wiz” Jiang, 21, was the second highest rated player on his team with a 1.20, but his fantastic performance still wasn’t enough to stop the German organization.
The map remained exciting until the very end and Sprout was still able to recover from its deficit in order to After losing EG on Ancient, the team went to Mirage and stumbled again. They were in a tricky situation from the start, as a pistol round they had won was turned upside down on the T side after losing to a Forcebuy and Sprout won several rounds in a row. Although it was a shaky affair, the Evil Geniuses were able to win the first half 10-5.
Sprout wins the match 2-0
But Sprout didn’t give up so easily and showed the Evil Geniuses who was the more dominant team. They managed to turn a deficit into a draw with skillful moves before their opponents could counter. In the end, Evil Geniuses came out on top as Sprout finished the game 16-13 before it could even go to the decider, Inferno. Sprout had previously lost to OG in overtime at IEM Katowice, so they were determined to avoid overtime with EG.
Hard times at EG?
With the loss against the European team, EG is now out of the play-in of IEM Katowice. Lately, things have been a bit stagnant at EG, who also failed to score a big success at the Blast premier Spring Groups and were eliminated quite early. Despite the defeat, seemed to be in reasonably good spirits, as Timothy “autimatic” Ta said after the match that he was happy with his performance, even though they lost.
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IEM Katowice DAY 1 VLOG is now live! 👀🌱https://t.co/MdjUUqYXRY— Sprout (@sproutGG) February 1, 2023
He admitted, however, that they would have liked a better result, of course, but that they can also learn from every game. That sportsmanship could take the Evil Geniuses a long way this year, even if it’s over for now at the IEM Katowice play-in. Sprout will next face Team Spirit on the last day of the play-in and fight for a place in the group stage of the IEM Katowice.