G2 Esports beat Mousesports 2-1 to decide who moves on to face Virtus Pro in the quarter finals tomorrow at DreamHack Open: Cluj-Napoca. They beat them on Mirage (Mouse’s pick) in Overtime 19-16, lost Inferno (G2’s pick) 12-16 and dominated on Cache 16-5. The match was full of highlights and is a must watch for fans of either team who missed the live broadcast.

Mirage was back and forth the whole time. Maikelele’s name was mentioned the most on G2 Esports because it seemed no matter how many members of mousesports were in his way, he’d find a way to isolate them and kill them. In round four he found himself in a 1v4 on the B bombsite and killed three members, one of which dropped the bomb, and successfully hid from the last as time expired. It seemed as if all players on G2 were firing on all cylinders, as everyone had a chance to shine throughout the match. Mousesports weren’t playing terribly, and the map was their pick. NiKo had another astonishing desert eagle round in which he tapped out three headshot to three terrorists on cat to end a round. Mouse looked visibly frustrated as the match labored on, and eventually fell in overtime, only grabbing one of four rounds played.

Inferno was G2’s map choice, and the map they sent mousesports into the lower bracket with. You wouldn’t have known that if you’d have watched mouse’s terrorist half. A close first half and 7 rounds on T side made it seem as though mouse was set for a repeat, but they came back with an even stronger T half, winning eight of the next 13. And that’s after losing their pistol round. It seemed as though G2 was stuck force buying a lot of the match, a testament to the damage done to their economy over the rounds by mouse, and after a certain point, were stuck force buying to try and stop mousesports who were sitting on a six round lead at 14. Two picks banana lead to a B execute that couldn’t be retaken by the remaining G2 members, and the two teams took their talents to Cache.

Cache moved quickly and decisively as G2 had their way with mouse. G2 started on the CT side. The first seven rounds saw mousesports take G2 down to only two 2v2s, while almost every other round four or more players from G2 survived. Each G2 player had a chance to shine with an impressive multikill, jkaem behind the box in B-main with a 4k comes to mind, while mouse was on the unfortunate end of a one-sided match on a map that’s considered to be fairly even when it comes to side advantage. G2 was up 8-0 when dennis (of G2) couldn’t find the bomb to defuse it on A site because it was obscured by smoke. He searched and searched and searched while chrisJ hunted down his team mate and eventually him. Without that anomaly, G2 would’ve been up 9-0, which could have lead to an even more one-sided half than 11-4.

G2 had a problem keeping the bomb within a reasonable distance from where they were hoping to get to and with planting the bomb promptly. This didn’t ruin the matches for them, obviously, but those timing mistakes may hurt them when looking ahead to a match against Virtus Pro. If they keep fragging like they did against mousesports, they’re definitely going to be able to put some stress on the Polish team. All five members of G2 had their names constantly in the conversation thanks to solid performances, and they will genuinely need to keep it up if they want to make this major their major.

Mousesports goes home with a 1-2 record, but not a lot to be ashamed of. They lost an extremely close match to a team in G2 that is finally starting to take shape as a team. ChrisJ looked solid, but missed too many awp shots that could have changed the shape of rounds, which could have easily changed the shape of the match as a whole. NiKo was doing nothing less than fans have come to expect, he was killing people nonstop, but more than once he was caught so terribly out of position that it cost them the round — cut to maikelele’s 1v4 on Mirage. Mouse took down flipside, and that’s reason enough to be proud, but in the end, another team that qualified online goes home and another team that was invited moves on.