Los Angeles, California - After an exciting day of group play, the double elimination brackets for The Bridge were about what everyone expected. With the exception of n'synC (a pug of top players who have all qualified for the combine already), every team that advanced could probably be considered among the top twenty in North America. What happened during the double elimination portion of the tournament surprised most of the top competitors, made boy bands everywhere proud, and left some people eating their words.

n`synC and u5 (each comprised of qualified players) proved that they deserved their positions. What was surprising is the team that joined them in the top three. EG came into this event as one of the least favored "good" teams. After mediocre performances in CEVO and at Buy.com, it was apparent that this team needed to get its act together. All they needed was a "jump start" to get them going, and they got it in the worst kind of way for their opponents. EG took the long road to the grand finals, beating SXP, Pandemic, JMC (in JMC's 3rd OT match in as many matches), and n`synC on their way. At the end of the line stood United 5, the team that put them in the lower bracket and the one totally dominant force at the LAN.

EG Roster:
Garett "Grt" Bambrough
Pasha "Lari" Lari
Griffin "shaGuar" Benger
Matt "Stevenson" Stevenson
Corey "tr1p" Dodd

u5 Roster:
Bobby "keen" Aihama
Jimmy "foogs" Koller
Ben "ben" Hui
Albert "hahn" Hahn
Cyrus "org" Habibi

First Half
The map played in the grand finals was de_dust2. Evil Geniuses started as offense on a slightly offensive sided and very aggression oriented map. EG came out with a bang their first round as Stevenson opened up with his awp and outpicked Foogs in middle. tr1p quickly worked catwalk by dropping straight down from offense spawn after smoking middle, then flashing over middle and getting in position. shaGuar went catwalk the long way while Grt watched for a long A push and Lari threw a distracting smoke into B (this basic set up was used as EG's default attack and almost every round they started off in it).



tr1p was dropped quickly by keen on catwalk, but shaGuar came up from behind and fragged both keen and org. At that point Grt hit long A but was stopped in his tracks by hahn, he was able to delay hahn long enough however, and EG was able to frag him and get the plant in the A bomb site. u5 flanked quickly and was able to catch EG out of position, ben eliminated Lari and dinked Stevenson over the A site box. EG was saved by Stevenson's clutch awp shot into ben's face. From this point it only went down hill for EG.



u5 decided to take a different approach in the second round. org and keen played long A, foogs played mid, and hahn took over B with ben by his side.