Europe Minor Closed Qualifier - StarLadder Major 2019mousesports overcome OpTic, North edge out Ancient for Europe Minor slot
After losing the first map, MOUZ bounced back to take the series over OpTic 2-1, while North pulled off comebacks on both Nuke and Overpass to take down Ancient. Both winners are now qualified for the Europe Minor.
OpTic and MOUZ clashed in the third upper-bracket quarter-final after taking down Virtus.pro and GamerLegion, respectively, on the first day. The series started on Mirage, MOUZ' pick, where Finn "karrigan" Andersen's men did take a 4-2 lead on the T side despite losing the pistol, but struggled significantly after that. MOUZ' IGL spent the majority of the half without a kill while Mathias "MSL" Lauridsen dominated on the other side, helping OpTic to a 10-5 half with his opening frags.
After the switch, Nikolaj "niko" Kristensen and OpTic's yet-to-be-announced player René "TeSeS" Madsen combined with two kills apiece to claim the pistol, only for MOUZ to reply with a force buy and bring the score back to 11-8. However, the Danes went back to their winning way after that and closed the map out with five consecutive T rounds, 16-8.
OpTic kept their momentum into the second map, bouncing back from a pistol round loss to take a 5-1 lead on the T-side of Nuke. The European mixture finally stopped the bleeding as Chris "chrisJ" de Jong picked up a quad-kill, and they built on that, chaining nine rounds in a row, Robin "ropz" Kool's ace and 3K at the end of that run helping their effort significantly. karrigan's men lost the second half pistol, but got back in the driving seat with crisp Deagle headshots on the following force buy. With their significant economic advantage, they closed out the map 16-8.
It all came down to Inferno as the decider, where MOUZ were bullying their opponents from the start. Playing on the defensive side, the European mixture went up 9-0 with Özgür "woxic" Eker sitting on an 11K-1D scoreline. OpTic won a round to spoil their opponents' perfect streak, but they only managed two rounds in total before switching to CT (13-2). The start of the second half was scrappy, but the massive lead allowed MOUZ to close out the map quickly, 16-4, and qualify for the Europe Minor.
 OpTic |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48 - 48 | 0 | 73.1 | 60.3% | 1.00 | |
| 39 - 49 | -10 | 61.4 | 54.4% | 0.82 | |
| 35 - 48 | -13 | 60.8 | 63.2% | 0.81 | |
| 32 - 50 | -18 | 53.4 | 52.9% | 0.79 | |
| 32 - 53 | -21 | 59.6 | 45.6% | 0.68 |
 MOUZ |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55 - 38 | +17 | 82.8 | 70.6% | 1.27 | |
| 49 - 36 | +13 | 75.1 | 76.5% | 1.24 | |
| 51 - 35 | +16 | 83.0 | 75.0% | 1.21 | |
| 44 - 35 | +9 | 72.1 | 76.5% | 1.15 | |
| 49 - 42 | +7 | 78.8 | 69.1% | 1.12 |
In the final quarter-final, another Danish team was in action, North. Valdemar "valde" Bjørn Vangså and co. defeated NoChance in their opening match, and they now faced Ancient, who managed to upset Windigo earlier.
Nuke started the series, where North won the pistol, but lost the second round to Joakim "disco doplan" Gidetun's hat trick of frags. Ancient used that to build early momentum while North only got back on track after a force buy win, chaining four together to make the score 7-4. The Swedes still finished the half with a convincing lead, 10-5, before Jakob "JUGi" Hansen's quad-kill on the pistol inspired the comeback from North. With Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye and Philip "aizy" Aistrup waking up on the defensive side, they started stringing rounds together and completed the comeback, 16-14.
Overpass was a similar story, North took a 5-1 lead off the back of the T-side pistol win, but struggled to breach the defenses of William "draken" Sundin and co. in the rifle rounds. After the good start, valde's men only mustered one more T round, finishing the half 9-6 down. Ancient built on that by winning the pistol (13-6), but again faltered at the final hurdle. North held their defenses strong and picked up 10 out of the next 11 rounds to win Overpass 16-14 and take the series 2-0.
 Ancient |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45 - 38 | +7 | 82.8 | 66.7% | 1.18 | |
| 41 - 43 | -2 | 75.7 | 66.7% | 0.99 | |
| 35 - 33 | +2 | 61.8 | 68.3% | 0.98 | |
| 36 - 42 | -6 | 71.8 | 66.7% | 0.97 | |
| 27 - 43 | -16 | 59.3 | 63.3% | 0.76 |
  North |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 45 - 32 | +13 | 77.0 | 78.3% | 1.22 | |
| 42 - 37 | +5 | 87.4 | 70.0% | 1.19 | |
| 47 - 37 | +10 | 74.6 | 73.3% | 1.17 | |
| 34 - 40 | -6 | 66.1 | 65.0% | 0.93 | |
| 31 - 38 | -7 | 55.2 | 66.7% | 0.86 |
With these results, four out of the eight Europe Minor teams have been found:
Nemanja 'huNter-' Kovač
Otto 'ottoNd' Sihvo
Rokas 'EspiranTo' Milasauskas
Kévin 'Ex6TenZ' Droolans
Kevin 'kRYSTAL' Amend
Thomas 'Thomas' Utting
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