The third and fourth games of the Swiss Stage of the Red Bull Home Ground #5 main event saw G2 and T1 find victory. In this format, four teams will qualify to the playoffs, if they can win two BO1s.
G2 Esports G2 Esports North America Rank #3 jawgemo Alexander Mor trent Trent Cairns valyn Jacob Batio JonahP Jonah Pulice leaf Nathan Orf defeated the new Karmine Corp Karmine Corp Europe Rank #31 saadhak Matias Delipetro Avez Hazem Khaled Elite Efe Teber SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin marteen Martin Pátek roster on Haven, barely breaking a sweat, with a score of 13-7 while the fourth game of the day saw T1 T1 Korea Rank #2 stax Kim Gu-taek (김구택) Meteor Kim Tae-oh (김태오) Sylvan Go Young-sup (고영섭) BuZz Yu Byeong-cheol (유병철) iZu Ham Woo-ju (함우주) take down FUT Esports FUT Esports Europe Rank #7 xeus Doğan Gözgen MrFaliN Furkan Yeğen yetujey Eray Budak AtaKaptan Ata Tan cNed Mehmet Yağız İpek qRaxs Doğukan Balaban in a 13-7 fashion on Ascent.
G2 Esports vs Karmine Corp
While G2 maintained their roster which had found them qualifying consistently for international events, including Champions 2024, KC were coming in with an almost complete roster rebuild, with only marteen left from the 2024 VCT season. Both teams had an almost-mirror comp, with the sole difference being Omen on G2's side while KC opted for the Astra.
G2 started off strong with a pistol round win, and a failed force-buy attempt in round two ensured they got to a 3-0 start. KC were able to convert their full-buy round with saadhak winning a 1v1 against trent . Another G2 round win saw KC once again pushed into an eco which G2 won, pushing their lead to 5-1. KC won the upcoming buy with three left alive, and post a timeout, they regained their footing to tie things up at 5-5. G2 won the last two rounds were to close out the half 7-5 with a 1V3 sheriff clutch from Trent. Despite the close score, both jawgemo and Trent had 15+ kills already while none on KC had crossed six.
Trent with the 1v3 sheriff clutch.The second half saw G2 on attack. They won five straight rounds in a row as Trent found two 3Ks and Jawgemo a 3K and 4K, continuing their blistering pace from the first half. It seemed over at 12-5, but KC still had some fight in them, with them winning a 2V5 and then Marteen clutching a 1v1 against Jawgemo. G2 closed out the next round to lock in their win 13-7.
Jawgemo was the MVP with 27 kills on Neon – equal to the top two players on KC put together – and a kill differential of +20. Trent was close behind with 24 frags of his own. In contrast, all of KC went negative in terms of kill differential and their top frag – Marteen – had 14 kills to his name.
“Our loss against FUT yesterday refreshed us as a team, it made us focus and figure out what our goals are.” said Jawgemo. The G2 duelist also casually dropped a bomb with him mentioning he always changes his settings before every event, while also calling his 347 ACS performance today “shaky.”
T1 vs FUT Esports
FUT came into the main stage through the international play-ins without losing a game, while T1 won the APAC play-ins to qualify. FUT had benched cNed , fielding xeus in his place, while T1 had rebuilt the roster with Masters Shanghai winners Meteor and Sylvan joining, as well as ex-DRX player BuZz joining the team, keeping only iZu and stax from 2024's VCT season.
Ascent was the chosen map of play, with T1 starting on attack. FUT were able to win the pistol and anti-eco, with T1 converting their full-buy and the following round with 3Ks from Meteor and Sylvan respectively. FUT bounced back with a retake of their own but an ace from Meteor tied things up at 3-3 again. The half continued in a back and forth fashion, concluding 6-6.
Meteor is clean in the clutch.With the side-swap though, T1 looked like they could do no wrong. They won six rounds in a row, the last with a 4K from Stax to reach match point. FUT finally got on the board for the first time in the half with AtaKaptan winning a 1v1 to bring the score to 12-7, but T1 won the next round to take the map 13-7.
T1's Meteor had an absolutely ballistic game on the Killjoy, going +13 in terms of kill differential and a 311 ACS. For FUT's side, Atakaptan was the MVP with 19 frags and an ACS of 265.
Both T1 and G2 only need one more win to qualify for the playoffs.