NAVI to face Gambit in BLAST Premier upper final after taking down BIG

The CIS derby will take place on Saturday at 15:30 , with a grand final spot on the line.

Natus Vincere knocked BIG down to the lower bracket of BLAST Premier Spring Final with a 2-0 victory, beating the German team resoundingly on Dust2 (16-2) and edging out Inferno (16-14).

BIG's pick of Dust2 backfired heavily as Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz and co. couldn't match up with the Russian-Ukranian side in any department, and Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy's clutch play proving most difficult to deal with. Then, on BIG's first Inferno played since March, Natus Vincere managed to come back from a 12-7 deficit as Terrorists to win the series in two.

In the post match interview, Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev admitted that his team expected to play Overpass, but BIG's deviation from their standard veto pushed them towards Inferno. Commenting on the upper-bracket final matchup, the AWPer said that he hopes Natus Vincere are Gambit's kryptonite, as they are the only team with a good record against the world's No. 1 winning the last two head-to-heads. "Maybe they are playing too much, we started to learn their game and play better against them. But still I think they are always focused against us," s1mple concluded.

Natus Vincere were off to a blazing hot start on Dust2, the pick of their opponents. In no time, BIG found themselves 10-0 down on the offensive side as three clutches from Perfecto didn't allow the Germans to get going. The Russian-Ukrainian side dropped just two rounds before switching sides, went on to win the second pistol, and swept the map 16-2 to move on to Inferno.

With a second-round force-buy win, BIG quickly went on to grab a 4-1 lead on the second map, outdoing their total for Dust2 swiftly. Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov's double entry with the CZ-75 set up Natus Vincere to win a force-buy, inspiring his team to tie the scoreline at 5-5. As the map went on, Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş and Nils "⁠k1to⁠" Gruhne continued to cause problems for the defense and finding openings, pushing BIG to a 9-6 advantage at halftime.

The Turkish player picked up four on the pistol and clutched a 1v2 in the follow-up to see his team move closer to victory (12-7), but Natus Vincere didn't falter. Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy powered through and inspired a comeback with a 15K-8D Terrorist scoreline. The CIS side made the most of the opportunity he provided and closed out the map 16-14 after a couple of frantic rounds at the end of the match.