MOUZ’s young international squad keeps going from strength to strength in CS2, and with a second 3-0 final under their belt in quick succession, they achieved something the org has never done before: becoming number one in the HLTV rankings.
Shortly after defending their ESL Pro League title, MOUZ were straight back in the action at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade, an event with lesser prestige but a nevertheless notable $500,000 prize pool and some big-name opponents in their way.
In the end, siuhy and co. only dropped a single map along their four-series journey, defeating BetBoom Team, Virtus.pro, Heroic, and Team Spirit on their way to the title. The demolition of donk and his merry men will no doubt live long in the memory, as it’s rare to see Spirit take such a straightforward loss in their current form.
The series started out on Vertigo, widely seen as Spirit’s weakest map in the pool right now, and the closely-contested 13-11 affair in the favor of MOUZ suggested a pitched battle to come. The margins were as small as they could get, with the final round coming down to an unfortunate falling death on Spirit’s side from chopper.
The rest of the series, however, turned out to be a breeze for MOUZ. They raced to a 9-3 lead on the CT side of Ancient and racked up the first three rounds on the offense, too, and while Spirit did manage to string six rounds together, the comeback never really seemed on.
And so the series proceeded to Mirage, a map where MOUZ boast a 100 percent win rate in the CS2 era. Spirit weren’t even close to sullying this record, as siuhy’s men got off to an 8-1 start this time, and even though the half closed 8-4, they rattled off five straight CT rounds to secure the title.
The series was an individual masterclass from siuhy as the Polish IGL also racked up a +19 K/D and a 1.31 HLTV 2.0 rating to top the charts. Over on Spirit’s side, only donk was able to rank up a positive score in the lopsided series, but he’d still only come in at fifth overall in the server charts.
With this victory, this MOUZ side achieved what neither karrigan’s vintage nor the chrisJ-oskar-ropz-STYKO-suNny quintet could: topping the HLTV leaderboards. Not bad heading into IEM Dallas, where a larger crowd and greater opposition await.