A spot in the playoffs is on the line as Pentanet.GG and Avant Gaming clash this Friday in the final competitive week of the League of Legends Oceanic Pro League (OPL) 2020 Summer Split.
Pentanet.GG enter Week 9 with a 6-9 record to sit fifth in the league standings, a win behind ORDER and one ahead of their next opponents. While Jarrod “Getback” Tucker and co. have struggled to find any real consistency, they have shown just enough to keep themselves in contention for a top-five finish.
Pentanet had quite a difficult schedule in Week 8, where they lost to two league frontrunners in Chiefs Esports Club and Dire Wolves. They were far from embarrassed, however, and might have beaten Wolves had they drafted more late-game options.
Avant, too, have left a lot to be desired with their performances this split, as an underwhelming 5-11 record leaves them in sixth place. That said, Avant kept their playoff dreams alive last week when they pocketed an upset win against Chiefs.
A strong teamfight-oriented draft and solid individual displays were the key factors in the win over Chiefs. The standout player was Avant’s rookie jungler, Thomas “LeeSA” Ma, who has endured an inconsistent season but pulled out the bug guns when it mattered.
That result has given Dragon “Dragku” Guo and his crew a huge morale boost heading into the final week of the split, where they will have to produce nothing less than a perfect 2-0 run to reach the playoffs.
Pentanet.GG enter this bout as heavy favourites with esports betting sites, but we would not count out Avant just yet. While many will mark down their win over Chiefs as a fluke, the quality of that performance suggests there is more to come.
Avant’s chances this Friday may rest on LeeSA, who could be either a huge nuisance for his opponents or a total non-factor. The spotlight will also be on Jesse “Chazz” Mahoney. The Australian mid laner has the potential to become the main carry for the team, but his tendency to play control mages means he focuses more on keeping his team in the game instead of helping them win games.
There are a lot of question marks above Avant ahead of this bout, but the added pressure should inspire this team to new heights. They have already beaten Pentanet this season, so there is no reason they can’t do it again.
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AVANT entered the repechage match after losing to Grayhound in the finals of the upper bracket on June 2. Their opponents were ORDER, who AVANT had beaten 2-1 in the quarter-finals of the upper bracket. ORDER then cruised through the lower bracket with clean sweeps against Paradox Gaming, Genuine Gaming and rewound.
The battle for the second and last ticket to the Asia Minor started off on Mirage, a map picked by AVANT. The first half of the map ended in a narrow 8-7 lead for AVANT. Both teams managed to win four rounds each at the start of the second half, but ORDER switched into a higher gear and won the next five rounds to take the opening map 16-12.
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Having performed exceptionally well on Mirage, ORDER chose Nuke for the second map. They failed to carry over their momentum, however, mostly due to their questionable defence. Despite ORDER winning a few rounds before the interval, AVANT took a three-round lead into the second half went on to square the series with a 16-11 win.
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The map that would decide it all was Train. It ran a similar course to Nuke, meaning AVANT got out to a nice lead on the CT side (7-2). ORDER tried finding an answer to their problems but failed to achieve anything more than five rounds by the end of the first half. They started performing better after the break, but that was not enough as AVANT ran way with another 16-11 win to seal it.
The best player of the day was ORDER’s Alistair “aliStair” Johnston, who ended the finals with a 1.31 HLTV rating – not quite enough to carry his team through the qualifiers and into Asia Minor.