NAVI top EPL Group C over FaZe

Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen's men took down their European counterparts in two maps to advance directly to the quarter-finals.

Natus Vincere are through to the quarter-finals of ESL Pro League Season 18 after securing a 2-0 victory over FaZe in the Group C upper bracket final, dominating Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's side on Anubis (16-4) before narrowly stealing away Nuke (16-13) to close out the series.

The No. 9-ranked team in the world have Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy to thank for such a one-sided win on their own map pick as the Ukrainian rifler laid waste to FaZe round after round.

Utter dominance on the T side saw b1t rack up an 18-5 K-D and NAVI lead 11-4 before they quickly shut things down in the second half for a 16-4 win, with b1t finishing the map with 124 ADR and a 2.14 rating.

Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan took the reins at the onset of Nuke, although the map was immediately more contentious than Anubis thanks to FaZe trading round wins early on. Multi-fragging from Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken allowed his team to briefly take the lead at 6-4 before iM really got going, winning NAVI the last five rounds of the half to pull ahead again.

The halftime break marked a momentum shift as FaZe looked like they would manage to force a third map: Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard gunned down NAVI repeatedly in yard while Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool cleaned up the remaining frags, with FaZe winning seven straight to sit upon a 13-9 lead. A half-buy from NAVI ended up completely flipping the script, however, with Aleksib and Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev combining to recover a 3v5 and steal away control of the map.

From that point onward, Natus Vincere didn't let up and kept a tight hold of the game, bullying FaZe's defenses and replicating their seven-round streak to close out the game, 16-13.