Lions to semis; AGAiN bow out

Lions are through to the semifinals in the MSI BEAT IT 2011 tournament after defeating AGAiN on two out of three maps.

Lions had nothing but a fantastic start to their match against AGAiN. Starting out as Terrorist, Lions immediately began overwhelming their opponents, sealing several rounds in a row. 

It was during the ninth round AGAiN finally hit it off, scoring their first point of the match. However, that one round did not active a chain of events in terms of collecting further rounds.

As the first half came to conslusion, Lions boasted a total of 11 rounds won, much thanks to Frej "kHRYSTAL" Sjöström's impressive killing spree, to AGAiN's mediocre number of four.

Switching sides, the e-Stars Seoul champions got off on the brighter side, managing to take out the three opening rounds. But Lions would not be disregarded even so, quickly evening the scores.

With just few rounds left to go, Lions once again got the better of AGAiN, and were able to stear the first map, de_inferno, into a 16-8 win, putting the Swedes at an advantage for the next map.

Now on de_nuke, with AGAiN opening up the match by stating an initial 3-0 lead, Lions made good efforts in trying to counter their opponents, but to no luck as AGAiN always got the best of them. 

Wiktor "TaZ" Wojtas' team's lead grew to 8-0, which was when, in the following round, Lions attempted to change their losing trend. And they did, but only for a short while, scoring two points.

Before the first half came to an end, Lions managed to seal an additional three rounds, but they went into the remainder of the match with a five-round deficit, 5-10.

While AGAiN took out the initial round for the second time on the map, Lions mounted a short but successful comeback in the following round, relieving them from some of the disadvantage.

However, AGAiN were now at match point, with the scoreboard showing 15-13, so Lions were still under quite some pressure. Ultimately, AGAiN came out victorious with a scoreline of 16-13.

Moving on to de_dust2, Lions initiated by stomping AGAiN in the opening rounds, claiming five rounds back-to-back before their Polish contenders were able to score their first point of the map.

AGAiN managed to harvest a few more rounds, moving their score dangerously close to Lions, now being down by only one point. 

Lions, however, would not let AGAiN creep up and past them, rolling on to set the score to 9-6 before going into the following half, having roughed up the Poles enough to enter with a small lead.

A brighter start for Lions made sure to increase their lead, now at 13-9, but a coutermove by AGAiN proved successful and rewarded them with another point.

With both sides rushing to the final number 16, Lions controlled the remaining part of the match, not letting AGAiN slip through, sealing the necessary rounds for them to close at 16-10.

DreamHack Winter 2011Best of 0 LionsMatchpage 2 1 26th November 2011 AGAiN 16Inferno 8 13Nuke 16 16Dust2 10

This means Lions will take on Natus Vincere, who defeated SK Gaming in their quarterfinal clash, in the upcoming semifinal stage at DreamHack Winter 2011 at 17:15 .

Match statistics:

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