FaZe oust G2 from IEM Dallas

FaZe move on to play another fellow international team, ENCE, in the semi-finals.

FaZe have defeated G2 2-1 in the IEM Dallas quarter-finals to secure a place in the top four stage. They will face off against ENCE next on Saturday at 22:00 , a matchup that has been difficult for FaZe as they lost the previous two times, once in the Dallas group stage and once in the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

In the quarter-finals, the team around Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen dropped a big lead on the opening Ancient to trail the series 0-1 but came back with landslide victories on Inferno and Mirage to lock down their spot in the semi-finals.

"We lost Ancient to ourselves, we couldn't adapt, they obviously had momentum and started to hit some shots. Inferno we just wanted to come out swinging and keep our foot down, and we tried carrying it over to Mirage," Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken said about the series on the stage after the match.

Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard, Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool, and Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants were all on fire throughout the series and finished the best-of-three with above 60 kills and 1.30 ratings each. On the other side, G2 found some of their individuals missing while they got demolished on the second and third map; only Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov ended the series with a performance up to his usual standards.

FaZe picked Ancient in an attempt to punish G2 but could not bring their map choice over the line despite having a 7-0 lead on the Terrorist side to start. rain's openings helped them steamroll the opposition in that time, but once G2 adjusted with more forward and aggressive play, the chase was on.

Thanks to m0NESY moving around the map and finding key picks, G2 recovered with six of the last eight rounds and closed the gap with a pistol round win once on the offense. A Deagle buy win put FaZe back in the driving seat for a time, but several successful B hit helped G2 keep the game on a knife's edge and set them up for a glorious finish with spot-on calling. At 13-14 a late B fake had FaZe chasing their own tails and their economy broken, and at 15-14 G2 opted for a switchup with a quick walkout to A.

FaZe struck back with force on Inferno. G2 had crumbled on the Terrorist side when they faced Heroic earlier in the tournament and did so once again on what used to be their best map and one they had been undefeated on for months. FaZe kept stacking the correct sites and then executed aggressive pushes to perfection to not let their opponents have any breathing room. After a 13-2 half it was only a matter of time until they finished off the job, with a late ropz 1v3 breaking any hope G2 had left of a comeback.

Mirage did not buck the trend of FaZe getting off to great first halves. This time they put together a fantastic CT side, often once again bringing out double AWPs in the hands of broky and one of ropz or Twistzz, who had done the same in the team's earlier match against Cloud9.

FaZe limited G2 to just four rounds on the offense as Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač could not seem to recover from their disappointing second map performance. A pistol round victory and conversion of the next two all but sealed the win for FaZe, and it was all over not long after.