OG prevail against NAVI in BLAST Spring Final opener

Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković's side came out on top of a hard-fought three-map series.

OG have claimed victory in their opening match of the BLAST Premier Spring Final, securing a 2-1 win after shutting down two comeback efforts from the Ukrainian side on Mirage and Ancient to reverse-sweep the series.

The European combine emerged victorious in the battle of the stand-ins, Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov proving a more than capable replacement for Mateusz "⁠mantuu⁠" Wilczewski as he ended the series in the middle of the pack. For Natus Vincere, Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev ended at the bottom of the board, with the team as a whole looking a shadow of their dominant selves as they looked out of sorts on the server at varying points.

A pair of retakes that went the way of NAVI was how Inferno got underway, the Ukrainian side converting that momentum into a 3-0 lead before OG were able to respond in the gun rounds. Five back from nexa's men kept the scoreline close, and those narrow margins were also the end result at the break as Natus Vincere clawed back to edge out an 8-7 lead at halftime.

Following the side swap though, the map began to spiral into the favor of NAVI, thanks in part to Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy who found back-to-back triple and quad kills to recover 3vs5 and 2vs5 situations in the first two rounds of the second half. Further favourable situations for OG went by the wayside as the European combine were unable to close out a number of advantages, losing a 2vs1 and another 5vs2 as NAVI wasted little time in taking the map over the line, 16-7.

The tides turned on Mirage as OG bounced back from their lacklustre Inferno performance, making up for an 0-2 start by winning nine rounds straight on the CT side. NAVI kept themselves in contention by grabbing two more rounds, but were left looking out of sorts after OG took the last two rounds of the half and added to that tally following the side swap, going up 14-4.

A valiant comeback effort from Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev's side then got underway, OG's slow pace and individual duels coming back to bite them as NAVI clawed back; however, the Ukrainian side's run was put to a halt close to the final hurdle as OG scraped together two final rounds to secure victory 16-12.

Ancient played out in similar fashion as NAVI took an early lead, going up 6-3 before OG began to mount a better defense toward the end of the half, winning six in a row to pull ahead by three rounds at the break. Another pistol win and conversions in the subsequent anti-ecos and first gun round helped OG once again push up to a large lead, 14-7, but a swift end to the map eluded them as NAVI remained in the fight, garnering 12 rounds of their own.

Again though, in the final moments, OG managed to take things over the line, multi-kill rounds from Adam "⁠NEOFRAG⁠" Zouhar helping his side narrowly close out the map.