BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2023 Americas

Evil Geniuses to field academy roster in BLAST Showdown

27/3/2023 - 19:07

The North American organization registered its junior lineup for the upcoming BLAST Spring Final qualifier.

Evil Geniuses are set to field EG Black in BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2023 Americas instead of their main squad. The decision comes during a time of instability for the organization following changes to their academy setup and reports of an agreement to bring Ismail "⁠refrezh⁠" Ali to the senior roster.

The Danish rifler is reportedly close to joining Evil Geniuses to replace Jadan "⁠HexT⁠" Postma, who will in turn be demoted to EG Black. The Canadian has played for the academy lineup for nearly two weeks now, filling in for Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz, whose position in the organization remains unclear. The American in-game leader has not featured on the roster in some time, but his departure or benching has not been announced by Evil Geniuses.

Axed's EG Black finished third in ESL Challenger League season 44

EG Black recently finished third in ESL Challenger League Season 44 after a run that included victories over timbermen, Strife and TeamOne. Their journey at the online event was eventually cut short by a loss to ATK in the consolidation final as the international roster doubled up on Evil Geniuses' academy side following a win earlier in the playoffs.

Paytyn "⁠junior⁠" Johnson was by far the highest-rated player in the squad at ECL Season 44 with a 1.32 rating over 23 maps played at the tournament. HexT joined the North American halfway through the event, but still managed to record a 1.11 score with EG Black while powering his team to third place.

Evil Geniuses announce changes to academy rosters

The BLAST Showdown for the Americas begins on March 29 with eight teams competing for a $67,500 prize pool and just one spot at the upcoming BLAST Premier Spring Finals in Washington, D.C., USA. EG Black have a long journey ahead of them if they are to play in front of their home crowd, with an opening match against FURIA in the first round of the bracket.

William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba and company will have to beat the Brazilians in a best-of-three match to advance, a tough ask for a squad raked 61 spots below their opponents. There will be no second chances as a single loss will see them eliminated from the qualifier.

EG Black will field the following lineup:

Colby "⁠Walco⁠" Walsh
Jadan "⁠HexT⁠" Postma
William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba
Jeorge "⁠Jeorge⁠" Endicott
Paytyn "⁠junior⁠" Johnson

Tommy "⁠Axed⁠" Ryan (coach)

Jerric "⁠wiz⁠" Jiang (substitute)

Good, they are the better team.

2023-03-27 19:08

4 replies

yes

2023-03-27 20:10

2023-03-27 20:46

True

2023-03-27 21:10

Not saying much

2023-03-28 12:32

goat junior back

2023-03-27 19:07

7 replies

ngl, they might do better than the main eg

2023-03-27 19:09

6 replies

That is so funny tho.

100% lol

2023-03-27 19:12

2023-03-27 19:37

no chance they beat heroic

2023-03-27 20:33

Both EG secondary teams are better than the main roster It’s funny

2023-03-27 20:56

2023-03-28 00:33

KKKKKKKK

hext xd

2 replies

No it’s not xd it’s xt

2023-03-27 20:57

hexd

2023-03-28 12:33

"Academy" lol

3 replies

donk would 1v5 these noobs LULW

2023-03-27 19:10

He would donk them

2023-03-27 21:04

GL better anyway

EZ for GOAT junior

RUSH is coming for his 2nd Major

yes he is, trust it kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

2023-03-27 19:28

YES THE GOAT IS COMING

2023-03-27 21:12

They'll probably perform better than the main squad

well they cant do any worse than last place, which the main team seems to aim for every tourney i hope they get some wins

2023-03-27 19:15

1 reply

2023-03-27 19:35

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

GOD JUNIOR IS BACK Pog

same result probably

junior back in the big time for one match atleast

Unbelievable, they should have their partnership revoked from them. They don't even have a fucking roster to field while there are top5 worthy teams without Blast ticket

2023-03-27 19:11

Will never happen, blast is happy with the money and the other partner teams are happy with the free win over them.

2023-03-27 19:16

2023-03-27 22:06

WHAT

XDDDDDDDDDDDD

lol

2023-03-27 19:14

Well gl I guess

2023-03-27 19:17

Jeorge is the NA savior

goat junior

2023-03-27 19:18

axed kekw

Ez for jeorge

2023-03-27 19:19

Eg is a joke

This eg and blast partnership should not continue in cs2

Its not an academy team if 4 out of 5 players are older than 20. This is just a team lmao.

2023-03-27 19:21

5 replies

What does age have to do with Academy team? It means players with less overall professional experience and skill building. Professional sports have farm teams with younger guys yeah, but mostly it’s because they’re not tested in pro scene

2023-03-27 20:26

Even by that metric you can barely consider this an academy team. Rush is definitely not an academy player, and Junior and Hext already have experience on t1/t2 teams. I was going by WePlay's rules, which state that players must be between 16-21.

2023-03-27 21:46

Really my problem with this team and EG in general is they keep recycling the same NA talent that has already been given a chance instead of bringing in new, actual academy players. How long have guys like Junior, Wiz and Walco been stagnating in the scene? It's the reason NA has 2 good teams despite having the second largest playerbase in CS.

2023-03-27 21:50

Agreed but its good to see EG Black getting a chance. NA in general was recycling players as much as the Polish teams were for a long time so we never really saw any new names come through. Its changing slowly but none of the up-and-coming NA teams can challenge Liquid's world class roster

2023-03-27 23:08

2023-03-27 23:40

dycha chad

ez for jeorgesnorts

Actually best eg decision in years

2023-03-27 19:22

It’s weird they wear wolves tops (wolverhampton my home town) yet they don’t call themselves wolves ?

because everyone knows they are actually dogs :D

2023-03-27 19:33

actually true

2023-03-27 20:16

Lol actually better than main roster

now furia 16-0 or disband

2023-03-27 19:23

Well 2-0 anyways

>academy >rush choose 1 but yep this team looks more promising for some reason...in any case if they are not we only need to see then once unlike ESL where EG games were a torture to watch because how bad they were. Bloody 3 times

2023-03-27 19:24

I wish the rooster playing nothing but the best (jeorge is good) however they´re probably not gonna do all that good due to bad praccs in NA and the rooster having recent changes. EG, however, are just a youtube.com/watch?v=zjedLeVGcfE HOW do you end up with your goddamm academy squad for an event as important as this? And an academy rooster that has a stand-in and no IGL? So many support staff and it still feels like an amateur team....

2023-03-27 19:31

Tbh i would rate the chance of EG Black qualifying higher than the chance of the main team qualifying. Did you watch their EPL games? Brehze was in the bottom 5 performing players for the whole tournament while being the star player, even autimatic didn't perform up to his usual standard. Tbh i would even rate junior higher than wiz would didn't get anything done at all.

I think it´s hard to compare both roosters. EG has had such crap results and performances that the bar is essencially a submarine in the sence of looking better result-wise. I hope but don´t expect them to do better. Even if they have looked better, they only played in NA and remember the best player the squad has had was wiz (who has not saved EG-clownshow). The level in NA has fallen off so badly that I reckon even with all that support staff (EG´s liquidpedia staff page is a meme) it´s impossible to get new talent going and i have 0 hopes of EG successfully doing it. I hope i´m wrong (jeorge/swisher are my hopes) but I don´t see doing better than 2nd last place with zero hopes of moving forward...

2023-03-27 20:53

Walco is EG blacks caller Stan never called on EG black (or at least hasn’t for a while). He’s more so been developing walco’s calling

2023-03-27 21:00

I love how there‘s a 21-year-old coaching a 28-year-old major winner :D

2023-03-27 19:32

Thank god , It could not get worse than this.

LUL ok

2023-03-27 19:34

Junior ok byebye😂

2023-03-27 19:36

putting wiz on substitute is disgraceful

EG needs to unify its organization before CS2 is released. If that works, they may be competing in the first CS2Major. If it fails...I'll stop talking about this here.

2023-03-27 19:41

EGLUL

2023-03-27 19:42

LIVEEVIL

so many players but still using bot hext

no balls xD

2023-03-27 19:45

Junior 1.29 rating no chance for opponent

2023-03-27 19:46

the true evil genius is hext, he knew this all along and dropped himself to the B-tier team.

doesn’t really matter since it’s single elimination and they’re playing Furia for the first match, they’re gonna get rekt no matter what team they bring. hopefully jeorge can show some talent at least

2023-03-27 19:50

Junior boutta have furia’s number and drop a 1.9 rating

Furia will disband if this happens

2023-03-27 21:08

Junior wrecked furia on triumph so they signed him, why can’t he do it again?

2023-03-27 22:07

better than main💀

2023-03-27 20:00

Better than main by sooo much

2023-03-27 20:03

just let it go bruh its over 💀

2023-03-27 20:04

fuck blast

2023-03-27 20:05

Very disrespectful to blast and the cs community. We don't want to watch trash one sided games. Field them in a small tournament

2023-03-27 20:11

Bro this roster is better than the main team

2023-03-27 21:01

goat is back

2023-03-27 20:20

nice academy

2023-03-27 20:22

How is this allowed? This isn't the same roster that qualified for the showdown

2023-03-27 20:24

"qualified" xd

2023-03-27 20:27

They payed for this spot if they are not partner team eg will boom out in open qualifiers

2023-03-28 12:52

HAHAHAHAH WHAT

2023-03-27 20:42

would love to see autimatic move to Europe and join MOUZ. Thoughts?

2023-03-27 20:45

I’m down tbh

Rip Automatic

Cringe after cringe. Poor autimatic

2023-03-27 20:51

when EG will announce changes to their org management ?

2023-03-27 20:54

academy 30 yo team lmao

2023-03-27 21:11

Looking forward to see Jeorge against some better competition

why tf the average age of their "academy roster" is 24.3 tho? these guys wouldn't be allowed to play in an academy league

2023-03-27 21:28

RUSH, Stanislaw are counted in it. remove stan and the numbers are lower.

2023-03-27 22:35

WTF kinda money does EG have to be able to do these kind of things?

2023-03-27 21:49

forgot about chevron. how tf did chevron want to get involved with EG??

chevron is the perfect partner for EG youtube.com/watch?v=GjmUSvuF_-8

2023-03-27 22:41

sure they're both "evil" but why tf does an oil&gas company want to get involved with esports? and its the worst one too achievement wise.

2023-03-27 22:46

21 y/o coach interesting

2023-03-27 21:59

EG is a global pyramidal scam. period.

2023-03-27 22:02

what a clown organisation

solid lineup if u ask me

2023-03-27 22:16

nice lets go!!!!

2023-03-27 22:20

Wtf xd

2023-03-27 22:23

What a joke org

Rush, up and coming talent.

2023-03-27 22:24

Can they just fkn remove or destroy or eliminate hext

2023-03-27 22:53

RUSH JUNIOR AND HEXT WHAT CAN GO WRONG? ABSOLUTELY nothing.

2023-03-27 23:12

FURIA about to speedrun this first game xD

2023-03-27 23:34

2 ez 4 junior

2023-03-27 23:53

better team

2023-03-28 00:14

-Walco -HexT +autimatic +Brehze/cynic/Swisher

2023-03-28 06:38