oskar shines as mousesports defeat Renegades

MOUZ came from a map down to beat Renegades 2-1 and secure a spot in the semi-final stage at the ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals.

The playoffs in Odense began with an intercontinental clash between Renegades and MOUZ, two teams who had last faced each other at IEM Sydney. The Europeans had come out on top of that series 2-1, and Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong's side quickly realised that they would have a very difficult task at hand as they were soundly beaten on the opening map.

Renegades came out strongly on Cache and won their first six rounds as Terrorists to set the tone for the game. MOUZ then finally got on the board thanks to a timely flank by Miikka "⁠suNny⁠" Kemppi as Renegades prepared to push A, but the Australians refused to take their foot off the gas and closed out the half with a commanding 14-1 lead.

More misery was heaped on MOUZ as the Europeans lost the pistol round after failing to hold down the B site in a post-plant situation. A 1v2 clutch by suNny still gave mouz fans some hope, but the team's resistance was finally broken in the 20th round, when Sean "⁠Gratisfaction⁠" Kaiwai picked up three quick kills with an AWP to put the game to bed.

Mirage was a much more keenly-contested affair, though it also began with Renegades in the lead as Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage pulled off a quad-kill in the pistol round. Once they had money to work with, MOUZ put together a string of rounds to take the lead, but it would not last as the Australians retook control by picking up two rounds in a row, the second of which on the back of a quad kill by Joakim "⁠jkaem⁠" Myrbostad.

Down 3-4, MOUZ upped the pace and started dictating the economy of the game. It looked like the European side would hit double-digits in the half, but Renegades surprisingly rallied back on eco and bagged the final round of the half to make it a competitive 8-7 scoreline.

MOUZ endured an absolute nightmare of a start to the second half; any round they won was quickly countered by Renegades, so they were constantly kept off any economic development.

Up 14-11 and with the money control, the Australians seemed to have the game in the bag, but they suddenly ran out of gas, allowing MOUZ to finally find their footing in the half and go on an impressive run to lock down the map at 16-14.

Tomáš "⁠oskar⁠" Šťastný, who was leading the scoreboard heading into Train with a 1.41 rating - his closest teammate being suNny at 0.88 -, opened up the action on the decider map with a stunning ace in the pistol round to help MOUZ to overturn a 2v5 situation.

That round marked the beginning of a dominant run from the European team, who cruised to an 8-2 lead. Renegades still tried to get a footing in the half, but a 1v3 clutch by oskar after they had won a round left their economy in tatters, with MOUZ riding that momentum to bring the scoreline to 12-3.

Renegades found a lifeline in the second half as they bagged the pistol round and followed that up with an anti-eco and the first gun round. However, MOUZ responded with nothing but pistols to get within touching distance of reaching match point. The game then entered a highly-contested period as the teams kept trading rounds, with MOUZ eventually locking down the map following a trio of AWP kills by oskar - without a doubt the man of the match as he averaged 1.70+ ratings in the team's map wins.