Just a small update on CAL’s Season 8 Placement Tournament: pure.gaming dropped out after their first round loss to Nous Sommes Francophones. Instead of giving a team in the lower bracket a forfeit win, CAL decided to move Riot Squad into that spot.
I updated the bracket and made a note of the change. Hopefully, you remember Riot Squad from the pre-tournament tournament. If not, a quick refresher: they lost their best-of-three matchup against eMazing Gaming 1-2 (16-13, 14-16, 14-16).
There wasn’t any kind of rule or thought before the tournament about a situation like this, but in the end I think it was the right call. There’s no letter of the law to obey, but I think the spirit of the tournament was to find the best teams and put them in Invite. If they didn’t add RS to the lower bracket, one team (Legends) would get a forfeit win and another team that barely lost to the #3 seed would be left out. That doesn’t seem like it upholds the spirit of finding the best teams to play in Invite next season, so I don’t mind seeing the change.
If you want a parallel, just look at the NBA playoffs. The Suns-Spurs series was highly controversial because of some suspensions handed down to Suns players that didn’t seem to uphold the spirit of the rule or the spirit of the league. Those being, respectively: don’t fight or be punks, and may the best team win. I don’t want to go into it in a lot of detail, but the media reaction was largely against the NBA. So hopefully this will be a little more popular within the community.
Of course this changes the predictions as well, so here’s the updated pred from Round 2:
Legends vs. Riot Squad – All that stuff about CAL making the right choice is nice, but if I was coming at it from Legends’ perspective, I might not be as happy. Instead of being one win away from a berth in CAL-Invite, now we’re two wins away and have to play a very talented team. Not quite an upgrade.
I like Legends, I predicted them to beat pure 16-14, but I don’t think they’re going to take down RS. Riot’s going to step in and be one of the best teams in the tournament and in Invite next season (yes, they should make it). Hopefully the guys at Legends don’t get down and they can come back next season better than ever.
RS > LgD 16-12
You can find the updated bracket here.
