With Elevate’s disqualification and Team oNe playing from Mexico, Group A’s situation is delicate.
Realistically, there’s nothing players can do other than competing. Oxygen Esports learnt that the hard way at the Sweden Major, as Davide “FoxA” Bucci tested positive for COVID-19 before leaving for the European country. It can happen, and it’s unfortunate.
In Charlotte, Oxygen Esports faces a very weird situation. What was initially a four-team group stage changed to a three-horse race after Elevate’s disqualification as the Thais’ visa applications were denied. If that wasn’t enough, Team oNe were not allowed to travel to the US for the same reason, being forced to compete from Mexico – where they have been playing on 70-80 ping.
Oxygen Esports came precisely against the Brazilian roster, with the Americans obtaining a 7-4 victory. “For us, you know, it was the normal LAN build in my opinion, I feel the shots were connecting, everything was normally how it would be at an actual event playing against the team side by side,” explained FoxA.
“I feel bad that Team oNe is playing under those conditions, I think I saw something on Twitter saying one of their players also had food poisoning, those two combos and combined with everything else, definetely sucks for them,” elaborated Gabriel “LaXInG” Mirélez.
But, again, there’s nothing teams can do to change the situation. Players must focus on the competition. Oxygen Esports did just that, giving the people a big clutch-show on Villa. “We have a very talented roster, we have always been a roster who can clutch when necessary, but for us as a team to be better that’s not what we want to be relying on specially for wins,” FoxA described.
It is also worth noting Oxygen Esports’ choice to play on Villa, a map the team was yet to show with the new line-up.
“When you pick up a new set of roster, a new set of players, you are going to go run through all the maps that you might have had difficulties with, even your best maps, and see with this new lineup what maps still work and what maps aren’t, so obviously as we showed today Villa we put some work into it,” said FoxA.
“Our new roster I guess is like a lot better than our prior one, I am pretty sure the last time we played Villa was at Invite with Kyno and Yog,” concluded FoxA.
Oxygen Esports have been doing their homework, aiming to win the Charlotte Major, the ultimate objective. According to Ethan “Nuers” James, “we have been scrimming this map for a while now, we have been just hiding it, we never really thought we would be top tier at it you know, but you know we fixed some stuff and some strats.”
So, while Team oNe were playing blindfolded with no information on OXG strats on Villa, the American side knew a lot about the Brazilians in the Italian map – and obviously, they took advantage of it.
With today’s victory, DireWolves’ loss against Team oNe, and in a group of three, Oxygen Esports are halfway there.
Regarding Elevate, FoxA think’s it’s a “blessing in disguise” as the players and staff have less to worry about, but at the same time, the squad “was really looking forward to play Elevate which on our opinion was the only other team in our group that could come close to competing against us.”
Oxygen Esports will play tomorrow against Dire Wolves and Team oNe again tomorrow to lock in a spot in the Charlotte Major playoffs.