7. NoA over EYE – (16-14) (16-5) - CPL Winter 2004 – December 15th-19th, 2004

“No admin can stop them”

HLTV Demo (de_inferno 1st match)
HLTV Demo (de_inferno 2nd match)

NoA Roster

shaGuar
Method
Naikon
Element
XeqtR

EYE Roster

bullen
archie
vilden
Walle
GudeN

An International team finally achieves the ultimate, a CPL victory. This may eventually be looked back at as the match where CS finally was recognized as a truly International game. Yes, people play CS all over the World, but never before had a team with players born in different continents ever won a major tournament together. What a match it was too, almost tainted because of that famous flash bang bug in Nuke.

Three matches previous to the finals the 8th seed, Team NoA, faced the top seed and the defending champion of the CPL Summer 2004 event, EYE. The match started as normal and played out the first half with NoA taking an unexpected but not surprising lead over EYE. Their emphatic 9-6 lead on the offensive side of Nuke, a very defensive map, made most consider them a clear cut favorite to win the tournament.

It was all stripped away in a few minutes as EYE informed the admins that NoA used an illegal flash bang in the ramp room. Unbeknownst to EYE was the rule that CPL plan to enforce for the flashbang bug. CPL’s rule stated that once the infraction took place all rounds after that were forfeited by the team that threw the flash bang. The rule was suppose to be a harsh penalty to encourage teams to avoid this bug, a result of the 12th match on this list, 3D over mibr.

Instead, most felt it was an overreaction that left NoA down 10-5. EYE dispatched them in short order winning six of the nine rounds in the second half to win the match. After winning five tough matches in the lower bracket NoA reached the finals to face EYE yet again.

With the finals map being Inferno, a very even map, one expected both sides to come out with 8-7 type scores. Instead, both teams ended up winning their offensive side by convincing margins. NoA started on offensive putting up a huge 10-5 first half score. Two streaks of four rounds and six rounds each did the damage. More importantly they stopped EYE from putting together streaks of their own forcing them into tons of save situations to afford the expensive M4. Smart, slow strategies with quick aggressive attacks once NoA made a move really gave them decisive pistol round wins.

The second half wasn’t quite so decisive. The half ended in a 9-6 edge to EYE but almost every round in the second half was close coming down to one versus one situations, including at least once when NoA was defusing to win a round when the bomb exploded. Finally in the 9th round of the second half, the 24th of the match, NoA broke through with a huge three frag round by Griffin “Shaguar” Benger. Grabbing the next round, NoA held onto at least a tie when EYE staged a comeback bringing it to a final round after four straight round wins.

The final round was decided by a mistake on the part of EYE. First they took the bomb to the secondary bombsite behind the banana hall way. Then, instead of bringing the bomb into the bomb site, they actually rushed right into the spawn. Mike “Method” So was waiting as he eliminated three EYE members including one holding the bomb. A quick rotation by the rest of the NoA members found a dropped bomb right in front of them. EYE couldn’t recover and NoA won the map.

The second map featured two EYE pistol round wins, but NoA responded to both with save round wins. The first was on a strong deagle rush in an offensive second round and the other was on a full stack of the main bomb site that EYE ran right into. EYE looked over matched in the first map but manage to scrap out tough rounds. In the second map the luck wasn’t with them as NoA dominated play.

The real mark of this game was the intrigue around if NoA could pull it off, coming from the loser’s bracket. This was the first time in the history of the CPL a team had come from the loser’s bracket to win both matches and claim the title. History wasn’t on their side but NoA pulled it off and gave later teams a possible blueprint for doing the same at CPL.