Jitterbugs stand victorious in week 17 of Road to Radiant! With team roster consisting of Smrty, GodKane, Soup, Deejay and MooMan. If you missed the action, here is what happened.
Call it the x-factor, call it whatever you want, Smrty and his teammates have it. This young player has managed to win 8 out of the 17 total Road to Radiant weeklies with 10+ different teammates, no simple task when the average rank of players participating is Immortal and above.
Dominating from the start, Jitterbugs handedly defeated bottom seeded Baeza’s Road to Iron, 13-2. Up 10-0 before giving up a round, they would cruise to a victory unimpeded.
In their semifinal match, team 'Zoomer Aim' took what they could from the 8 time champs, but would ultimately be eliminated with a scoreline of 13-6 in favor of the Jitterbugs.
On the other side of the bracket, defending champions from week 16 grabbed a quick victory, 14-2, to advance and meet the Jitterbugs in the Grand Finals.
Team 'The Future' concedes the first 2 rounds before rattling off 6 in a row to jump out to an early 6-2 lead attacking on Ascent. It looked as if the Jitterbugs were in trouble as many of their decisions were met with decisive aim and coordination from their opponents. The scoreline jumps as far as 9-5 in favor of The Future before the Jitterbugs call a tactical timeout. With time (and more importantly, rounds) running out, the Jitterbugs do what champions do and win 8 of the next 10 rounds to be crowned Road to Radiant champions once again.
Here’s what team captain, Smrty, had to say on the night:
Question
"How's it feel to continue your domination of this event series? You've won with several different teams, who has had the biggest impact across these different teams? Yeet seems like a mainstay on your roster, but do you consider yourself the x-factor? You were down early in the Grand Finals, what adjustments did your team make during your timeout to forge a come back?" -ZombieZander
Response:
"It feels good to continue dominating the event series because there has been many different teams throughout the weeks. I wouldn't say its one person who is our x-factor its more of a team effort and when we play well as a team we don't lose but some weeks there are internal problems and people don't get along so its tough getting a mix of players who all get along and play well off each other to compete. We were down early on in the game because they were playing a really unconventional agent comp and it took us a few rounds to get used to how they were playing with the reyna awp shorty combo with the astra but we took time to talk about what they were doing and how we can counter it and then from there things went smoothly." -Smrty
Congratulations again to the winning team, Jitterbugs and GGs to all competitors this week. Road to Radiant is every Wednesday at 7 PM ET and is FREE to sign up. Register for next week’s here.