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Misfits came away Saturday with a 2-1 victory over the Ninjas in Pyjamas in Berlin to open Week 9, Day 3 of the European League of Legends Championship Series.
While Misfits (6-6, 14-16 match record) managed to pick up the win against NiP (1-11, 5-22 match record) to lock in the third seed of Group A and qualify for the playoffs, it didn't exactly do it resoundingly. It took until the final game of the series for Misfits to actually dominate a team that has only won a single series the entire split. Even then, it took NiP misplaying a blast cone invade in the jungle and giving up two kills before two minutes had passed in the game.
Still, Misfits took advantage and ran with it toward the finish line like a playoff team is supposed to. The team will want to check the tape of the first two games heading into the playoffs, however.
NiP took an early lead in Game 1 and looked as though it might be able to snowball into a win. It took Misfits jungler Nubar "Maxlore" Sarafian's Rek'Sai completely owning the matchup against NiP jungler Ilyas "Shook" Hartsema's Maokai with a Flame Horizon by 25 minutes to get Misfits back into the game.
The second game saw Misfits lose on a macro level from the very start. Misfits looked completely unable to handle the scaling nature of NiP's composition as it was soundly defeated in just 30 minutes. Misfits will certainly need to work on its macro game a bit to prevent this from happening once the postseason gets underway.
For Ninjas in Pyjamas, this was yet another series filled with miscues that left it without a way to pick up a win. Despite getting an early lead in Game 1, it was wholly unable to stand up to Misfits in the late game, as the Ninjas simply rolled over and let Misfits do whatever it wanted in the win. Even after forcing a third game, NiP came out in that final game and was off from the start. Two blast cone errors led to three deaths for NiP, which is just something that can't happen at this level of play. NiP will have its work cut out for it when it competes in the Promotion Tournament following the conclusion of the split.
Ninjas in Pyjamas will be back in action at 11 a.m. ET on Thursday to take on league-leading Fnatic, while Misfits will finish its split against Team ROCCAT at 11 a.m. on Aug. 12.