Pro League Recap: Week 14

Much happened in this past week of the Pro League. Teams scraped into LAN spots, while others fell down into Challenger League in some tight games. If you missed the action, though, here is a refresher of what went down.

North America (NA):

Needing a win against Evil Geniuses to keep their fate in their own hands and avoid auto-relegation, Obey Alliance fell 5-1 behind very quickly. While they were able to engineer a comeback to 5-5, the draw meant that their survival in the Pro League then depended on Noble esports also only managing a draw (at best) against mousesports (mouz).

Alas, Obey found themselves tumbling down to the Challenger League (CL) as Noble swept past mouz in a 6-2 victory and gave themselves a fighting chance against the 2nd placed team from the CL. Following the match, Skys drew the curtains on his time as a player, and will now look for coaching opportunities instead.

In the midst of these two momentous games, though, was the battle for LAN between Rogue and SK Gaming. With both these teams having struggled post-Paris, it could have been anyone’s game, and Rogue came up top with a 6-4 victory, escaping overtime by denying the SK captain, Mint, a brilliant 1v4 clutch. With that, they booked their ticket to not only the Pro League Finals, but also the 2019 Six Invitational. Cloud9, though, unfortunately had to forfeit their game against Spacestation Gaming following some technical issues on their end.

Latin America (LATAM):

Starting things off was paiN Gaming, who confirmed their relegation zone placement -- and opened themselves up to a risk of auto-relegation -- through a 6-2 loss to BootKamp Gaming. Black Dragons, meanwhile engineered a stunning 5-5 draw against FaZe Clan, but given their failure to prevent FaZe from getting 5 rounds of their own on the board, they directly fell into the Challenger League.

The third game was also a draw -- but had the opposite result at the opposite end of the table. Team Liquid was unable to secure a much-needed victory against Team oNe, and thus fell agonizingly short of a LAN slot.

With the previous results, the final game between Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP) and Immortals was a dead-heat, with the former guaranteed to avoid the relegation zone thanks to paiN’s loss, and the latter guaranteed to go to LAN. As such, NiP recorded their fifth win of the season in a game that ended 6-3 in their favor, and rounded off a strong post-Paris Pro League showing.

Europe (EU):

The EU region had only a single season-defining game, but was no less entertaining to watch. Team Vitality secured a 5-5 draw against PENTA Sports in a result that had no effect on the standings, but it was the next game everyone had their eyes on.

Fighting for a LAN slot, majority-French team Millenium went up against the German Mock-it Esports squad -- a grudge match not only because of the stakes, but also because AceeZ had left the Germans just after the Paris Major. Many had written off Mock-it’s chances at LAN, with some even going as far as to consider them relegation candidates, but the KS-led team would prove every doubter wrong as they secured their ticket to Rio with a 6-3 victory over Millenium.

The tense matchup was then followed up by a quick 6-0 demolition of Supremacy by G2 Esports. In the match, G2 Esports’ analysts Ferral had been allowed to play in place of Pengu in a kind gesture for his initial goal had been to become a professional player, and he had wanted to experience a Pro League game as a player for once.

Finally, to round things off and put a neat bow tie on the online portion of Season 8 of the Pro League was Team Secret and Chaos. Despite LAN qualification mathematically impossible, Secret played to their full strength, and took down their Swedish opponents 6-3 and called the curtains on an exhilarating week.

The top two teams from each region, including APAC, now go to the Pro League Finals in Rio de Janeiro, held from the 17th to the 18th of November. At the end of the EU play day, the match ups were drawn, giving us the following brackets:

Mock-it Esports goes up against the fearsome FaZe Clan, while NORA-Rengo gets ready for a rematch against Rogue from the Season 7 Finals. In the bottom half, Immortals squares up against the team no-one was rushing to face -- G2 Esports -- while Fnatic takes on Evil Geniuses.

Catch all the action from the event on our official Twitch channel, and be sure to share your predictions with us on Twitter!