donk dominates FaZe to put Spirit through to semi-finals

The Russian superstar stood tall in his biggest test to date as his team topped Group A with ease.

Spirit have advanced directly to the semi-finals of IEM Katowice after brutalizing FaZe in the upper bracket final of Group A, recovering from a slow start on their Mirage pick to take victory 13-10 before Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets obliterated the European side on Nuke, 13-5.

The 17-year-old faced his greatest test yet after he missed out on his first chance to play FaZe at BLAST Premier Spring Groups and was simply unstoppable in the series, particularly so on Nuke where he was key in disrupting the European team's defaults and game plans. He showed no signs of weakness despite the step up in competition and sits atop the IEM Katowice event leaderboard after the series with an absurd 1.62 rating over seven maps, a full 0.22 above his closest competition, Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov.

The win earns Spirit a bye to the semi-finals of IEM Katowice, which Myroslav "⁠zont1x⁠" Plakhotia said he isn't even particularly excited about in a post-match interview. "I'm excited to play in the grand final, to be honest, not the semi-finals. I just want to play for the title."

FaZe, meanwhile, will start their run in the Spodek from the quarter-finals, where they will take on the winner of G2 vs. HEROIC on Friday.

A slow start from donk on Mirage, where Spirit started down 0-5 and the star rifler had a 2-6 K-D, quickly became a distant memory as the Russian team won six rounds in a row toward the end of their offense. A quad kill from donk in the second pistol round gave Spirit further control, and though FaZe kept the score close and briefly took the lead at 10-9, donk and Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov combined with multi-kills to net their team victory with four rounds in a row.

Nuke was far more one-sided courtesy of donk's omnipresence in Yard and Boris "⁠magixx⁠" Vorobiev's impregnable holds as an A site anchor, disruptions and defenses which allowed Spirit to post an 8-4 lead at the break. The Russian side wasted no time in converting that into a victory once on the T side, blowing FaZe out of the server with donk ending the map with a baffling 2.35 rating, 147.6 ADR, and 27-9 K-D.