Champion League 3s
Elite 3-2 Wizards
The Elite held off the Wizards to advance to the quarterfinals. The Wizards came out on top in game 1 with a 3-2 score. In game 2, the Wizards continued with a dominating 6-2 performance. The Elite came back with a 3-2 victory in game 3. The Elite continued with a 2-1 victory in game 4. The Elite clinched the series win in game 5 with a 4-3 victory. The Elite roster was Moxen, Cranked, and RuebenSandwich. I was able to interview and talk to them a bit about the series.
What did you all do to get ready for this series?
Moxen: We practiced throughout the week to get ready for the series – mainly just playing ranked 3’s together.
RuebenSandwich: We prepped how we usually do by practicing a couple times in the week and then hopping on 45 minutes before the match to warm up in ranked.
Cranked: We like to warm up as a team. About an hour before, we just talked a bit and played some RL. Get our comms going and just get in a good vibe.
How did you all feel going into game 5? How did the game go? It looks like it was probably a tense game.
Moxen: We felt pretty good going into game 5, we had to overcome the lost of the first 2 games which put us in line for a reverse sweep opportunity. That really lit a fire under us and kept the momentum which allowed us to complete the reverse sweep.
RuebenSandwich: I can’t speak for them but I felt nervous but confident. We have had a really good season and know each other’s playstyle well.
Cranked: It was definitely tense. We went down two games early so we definitely had to make some adjustments and start hitting the ball better. We went into game 5 with the mindset of ‘this is our season. We win it here or we go home.
What do you all think was your biggest strength during the series? What was your biggest weakness? How will you work on that this week?
Moxen: Our biggest strength is discussing our gameplay in-between games so that we could adapt to their play style and put up a bigger fight and not get upset at each other. Biggest weakness would be rotational-based decision making and adapting to the speed of our opponent. We are planning on playing more together this week to work out some kinks that we noticed during the series – whether that be to focus on rotations in ranked and/or more mechanical gameplay.
RuebenSandwich: Our biggest strength I’d say is that we had good comms and familiarity with each other. We were confident in knowing that there is always someone that has the other two’s back in rotations which allowed us to be aggressive and keep pressure. Our biggest weakness during the series was that we didn’t utilize our strength in the first two games and we paid for it with two big losses to start the series. We were able to man up and rally in game three and that provided us a boost of confidence that helped us finish the reverse sweep.
Cranked: Our biggest strength I think is coming back in and fighting till the end. Really just figuring out what we did wrong on the fly and pulling through to get the win as a team. Our biggest weakness was comms and hesitations. We just get in a better rhythm earlier and get more practice during the time off to keep working at it.
Would you want to say anything else about the series or about the upcoming series?
Moxen: It was a good series, the Wizards are definitely a solid team and put us through the ringer the first two games. I’m just glad that we were able to recover and pull out the reverse sweep and take the series.
RuebenSandwich: As far as saying something else I wanted to shout out the Wizards on an epic series. They were by far the toughest opponent we had played all season (imo) and the series could’ve gone either way. For the upcoming series I just want to wish our opponents good luck and hope it’s another great series.
Cranked: The series was fun. They put it on us pretty good, but we are super happy that we pulled through as a team and for the Elite organization. Moving forward, we just want to play better in our series. To come out firing and to really just respect each and every opponent in front of us.
Predictions: Out of the 5 predictions that were on the website, 4 out of the 5 got it right and 3 out of those 4 got the series score perfect. Lako’s sim surprisingly got this one spot on, predicting a 3-2. The others to get this perfect were Jaeg and DK. Lako got it right as well with a series prediction of 3-1.
Other Stats: The Wizards actually outscored the Elite 15-13 in the series. Both teams were showing off the team plays with assist percentages of .692 (ELI) and .733 (WIZ). The Elite had 38 shots on goal while the Wizards were close with 37. The Wizard actually finished the series with a better shot percentage than the Elite as well with a .405 while the Elite had a .342. Despite the Wizard having the better statistical series, the Elite buckled down and were able to pull out the win. From the interviews above, they all relied on each other and had the confidence to reverse the series. Congrats to the Elite and I love the respect shown to the Wizards! Hope to see you back in the playoffs next season Wizards!
Master League 3s
Sabres 3-0 Lightning
The Sabres slashed their way to victory. The Sabres won game 5-2 in game 1. They won 4-2 in game 2 and they finished the series sweep with a 2-1 victory in game 3. The Sabres roster was Liotta, Godkitty, and Roman. I was able to interview and talk to them a bit about the series.
What did you all do to get ready for this series?
Roman: Honestly, we came into the series unprepared. Liotta was in the middle of a move and had limited WiFi and I was preparing for my Apex Legends Pro debut. Godkitty was the only one of the 3 of us that was grinding Rocket League each day. He actually coached Liotta and I 2 hours before our game so we could get back into shape.
Godkitty: Normally the team does not do much in the realm of practice, but we opted for a warmup scrim before the game and just focused on flushing out some of our critical 3s weaknesses. If there was ever a time to work on our flaws, playoffs are probably a good time. I think it greatly helped our chances of success, and boosted our confidence going in.
Did you all get worried in game 3? It looks like the Lightning made the game a bit closer.
Godkitty: Not necessarily. We pretty much had the same mindset as the previous games. It’s better to play each game not looking at the scoreboard and rather focus on putting your best plays in regardless of the series standing. You play with your best foot forward and don’t step back until the series is won. Game 3 just had less clear opportunities on both sides for scoring due to heavy defensive play but otherwise the mood had not changed.
What do you all think was your biggest strength during the series? What was your biggest weakness? How will you work on that this week?
Liotta: Our biggest strength in the series was our defense, they wasted all of their resources trying to execute bump plays that we easily countered. We felt very solid during the series and it would be hard to say a weakness, but if I had to I would say passing. We are playing together and working on our chemistry to help us with passing more effectively.
Roman: Our biggest strength was our positioning. We never put each other in a bad place. Someone was always supporting the other player and we always had a passing option. Our biggest weakness was the fact that we haven’t all had the chance to play together recently. We didn’t know how well we’d perform as a team but thankfully we all clicked like we have previously in the season.
This week we’re going to play more together. We need to keep everything fresh so we can continue our playoff run. I wouldn’t say we got lucky by any means but the competition gets tougher throughout the tournament. We need to be at our A game potential.
Would you want to say anything else about the series or about the upcoming series?
Roman: I believe if we keep at it we can win the championship. Andy is the most organized captain I’ve ever had and he’s helping us get back into things. He’s making us realize that we were #1 but we aren’t anymore. We need to take this seriously and prove to everyone we’re the best once again. I have no doubt if we put in the work this week, the same result will happen again. A big 3-0. Good luck to (I believe it’s the Ducks) this week. You’ll need it!
Predictions: Out of the 3 predictions that were on the website, 2 out of the 3 predicted the winner correctly. Lako’s sim of this game got the series result completely backwards. It had predicted the Lightning winning 3-0. The two that got it right were B++ and I made one of my few correct predictions.
Other Stats: The Sabres had 11 goals compared to the Lightning’s 5. The Lightning were perfect on assists. They assisted on all 5 of their goals. The Sabres had 21 shots on goal while the Lightning were close with 16. The shot percentage was the huge difference in this game. The Sabres had a .523 and the Lightning had a .312. The teamwork for the Lightning was clearly there but the bounces were not on their side. Hopefully the Lightning can take the offseason to recharge and come back even stronger next season!
Master League 3s
Tyrants 3-0 Bears
The Tyrants came into this series ready. The Tyrants won the first game 4-2. The Bears did get a bit closer in game 2 but the Tyrants won it 3-2. Then the Tyrants dominated in game 3, winning it 6-2. The Tyrant’s roster was: Doodle!, Squintle, and Shadow. I was able to talk to them a bit about the series.
What did you all do to get ready for this series?
Doodle!: It all started on Wednesday. Keep in mind that this roster hasn’t played a single match together, whether that be in MLE or outside of MLE. So we did what any other ML team does for playoffs, play for like an hour each day every other day until saturday. Then came game day and BOOM the lineup we were playing with for 3 days, the lineup that was supposed to play the Bears, the expected lineup of Renku, Squintle, and myself. Yeah, that wasn’t the lineup we played. But the god gamer of Shadow stepped up and was a huge help in our games against the bears so big shout out to him.
Squintle: We got together around 45 minutes before the game, and we scrimmed against a team from another league that I have a friend on. We get wrecked in the scrim because we don’t necessarily sweat out in our scrims, we kinda chill out have a bit of fun and just kinda get used to playing with each other and warm up the mechs.
After the Bears got close in game 2, what did you all do to make it 6-2 in the 3rd game?
Squintle: The second game of the series is always the hardest to me, that’s the point where you got the first game out of the way, which is always a test sorta game to see how the other team plays. Fortunately we had the upper hand that game which gave us a brief sense of shield. The second game was close, we were 2-0 up then they were able to wrap it back to 2-2 to bring us to OT. We got a solid OT win after some nerve wracking moments, which I think is what helped us gain momentum going into the 3rd game, which as you saw we were able to take by storm.
What do you all think was your biggest strength during the series? What was your biggest weakness? How will you work on that this week?
Doodle!: “I think our biggest strength is our roster depth. Our roster has played with one another (aside from our top roster in question) and I can confidently say that most of them can play up to what they need to play to in playoffs. Our weakness, if I’m being completely honest, it was probably the lack of preparation. an hour and a half before gametime, we were made aware that Renku wouldn’t be able to play due to outside occurrences. As for what we are going to work on for our next matchup, lemme tell you. Absolutely nothing. From what we saw and with what we know about the Outlaws, we can beat them if we just play the way that we’ve been playing. Hopefully this time we can play our full strength roster.
Predictions: Out of the 3 predictions that were on the website, only 1 predicted the winner. Lako’s Sim of this game predicted the Tyrants winning 3-1! Lako’s Sim games actually have had a decent track record so far through the playoffs and should get more interesting as the playoffs continue.
Other Stats: The Tyrants had 13 goals compared to the Bears 6. The Bears assisted 5 out of those 6 goals. The Tyrants had 30 shots on goal while the Bears were close with 28. The shot percentage is the huge difference in this game. The Tyrants having a .433 and the Bears having a .214. The teamwork for the Bears was clearly there but the shots were not dropping for them. As a former Bear, I wish them the best of luck and hopefully they will come back next season to take home a championship!
Champion League 3s
hurricanes 3-1 spartans
The Hurricanes came storming into this series. The Hurricanes won the first two games 3-1 and 3-0. The Spartans got the third game with a score of 3-1. Game 4 was a close one and even went to OT but the Canes came away with a 4-3 victory and ultimately the series win. I was able to talk to some of the players and here is what they had to say:
What did you all do to get ready for this series?
SilentWolf: I personally have a warm up session I like to do before hand, I know zdog was doing scrims in the server earlier before the game and papi usually tends to hop right in and start playing, but we all partied about 45 minutes before the game to work on our rotations and positioning with each other.
zdog2017: We scrimmed 3 different MLE teams and scrimmed against our ML team. Also tried to grind a lot the two weeks prior.
What did you all adjust in game 3 to get the shutout? In game 4, did you think it was going to game 5?
SilentWolf: Game 4 was a really close game and we weren’t wanting to go to game 5 so we just tried to lock down on our positioning and making sure we weren’t over committing and making sure to cover each other on defense and on offense we tried focusing on team plays and taking advantage of their misplays.
Zdog2017: After winning the first two we knew we just had to calm down and play like we did the first two. We fixed our rotations and played a lot more consistently in the 4th game. I was pretty nervous about the 4th game because it did go to overtime but we were very dominant during the overtime so I had no worry that we would get the win.
What do you all think was your biggest strength during the series? What was your biggest weakness? How will you work on that this week?
SilentWolf: I think our biggest strength was finding our teammates to make the passes, even if it wasn’t always scored we didn’t let it get to us and still kept up the rotations and defensive pressure. I would have to say our biggest weakness would be our communication as a team and some rotational errors. It was good enough to come out with the win however, if we were just a little bit more on point then game 4 possibly wouldn’t have gone into overtime or we could’ve even gotten the 3-0 but regardless of that I’m still happy with the outcome of the series. For what we’ll try working on this week, we sadly won’t have Papi since he is going out of town so it’ll just be working with our 3rd and get the playstyle down with them.
zdog2017: I think our speed and our pressure was great and we never gave them space during the 3 wins we had. We also stayed very calm on defense and didn’t panic. Our biggest weakness was our boost management and rotations. They sometimes would get messed up but we were good to fix them very quickly.
Would you want to say anything else about the series or about the upcoming series?
SilentWolf: And lastly for the upcoming series I’m good friends with Soggy and also zdog and I both know Zack so there will be some friendly rivalries going on there but definitely looking forward to the game next week and just wish everyone luck in the upcoming series.
zdog2017: I also want to say that I’m very proud of my teammates. I felt like I wasn’t on my A game during this series and they stepped up and got us the 3-1 win. Bring on the Wolves next. GO CANES!!!
Predictions: Out of the 5 predictions, only 1 got it right this time. Lako was able to get the series win and the series score perfect.
Other Stats: The Hurricanes had 11 goals compared to the Spartans 7. Both teams had a great assist percentage. The Hurricanes with a .818 and the Spartans with a .714. The Hurricanes had 35 shots while the Spartans saved 16 of them. The Hurricanes regular shot percentage was .314 and their shot percentage accounting for what was saved was .578. The Spartans had 30 shots while the Hurricanes saved 16 of them as well. The Spartans regular shot percentage was .233 and their shot percentage accounting for what was saved was .500. The Canes were slightly more accurate but also put more shots on goal. Congrats to the Hurricanes and I hope to see the Spartans back in the playoffs next season!
