I took a look at the storylines and matchups leading into C9 vs Guard and the result of the match itself. Sorry for any typos or formatting errors, I'm writing this post on my phone
LAST MEETINGS AND ROSTER MOVES
-The last time these two teams met was in the LBF of Challengers 1 playoffs for a spot in Iceland. Guard won 3-0
-C9 have since swapped xeta for curry, and overhauled their coaching staff
-Both teams failed to make playoffs in Stage 2
HIGHLIGHT HEAD TO HEADS
-Please note that the numbers from their last meeting may be slightly inflated, since their last meeting was a Bo5
-Xeppaa vs Jonahp: Jonahp went 7-3 against his counter flex, Xeppaa. In their last meeting, Xeppaa got the better of Jonahp, going 11-8 against him
-Leaf vs Sayaplayer: Despite the 2-0 win, Sayaplayer was consistently losing to leaf, going 6-11 against the enemy duelist. Leaf also topped Saya in their last encounter, going 16-11 against his counter
-Mitch vs neT: between the two (fairly underrated) sentinels, neT got the better of Mitch, going 5-3 in fights, a huge turnaround from the 6-13 deficit he put against Mitch in their last encounter.
THE MAPS, THE ROUNDS, THE FRAGS
-Guard were on a 3 game loss streak on fracture, that has been broken today
-Guard won 3 of the 4 pistols
-Valyn led the server in 2Ks, with 11
-Vanity lef the server in 3Ks, with 4
-6 players in the server played 2 agents, the remaining 4 only played 1
ADDITIONAL STATS
-Everyone in the server had less than 150 adr overall
-Every Guard player had less than 140 adr overall
-neT went positive against every player of C9 except for Leaf, who he went 8-8 against
-Mitch was 4-1 against Saya on Op duels, and 6-2 on openers overall
-Vanity and Valyn had a total of 26 fights throughout the series, the most between any two players in the server. Vanity was ahead, going 16-11 against Valyn despite the loss
LOOKING AHEAD
-C9 will play the winner of the NRG/EG game, both teams
they have beaten in the past, albeit not with curry. They will need to win 4 consecutive games to make it to Champions
-Guard will play the winner of the 100T/Faze game. They are 2 wins away from Champions
ADDITIONAL NOTE
-This was the first match of LCQ I didn't get to watch at all, and I likely wouln't be able to watch SEN v SR either. Most of this analysis is based on stats and history, but I wanted to put it out there.
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