NAOS Esports and Oasis Gaming eked out reverse-sweeps on the opening day of the 1st split of the Philippine circuit of the VCT Challengers on Friday.
Waxing hot from their SEA Games qualifiers win, Oasis Gaming put up a 2-1 win against Sky Empire on the opening match, in a battle of ex-RRQ Philippines players.
As Sky Empire forged a win on Pearl (13-10), Oasis Gaming went on to draw dominant wins in the Icebox (13-6) and Haven (13-4) maps, with Sky Empire firing blanks on the attackers' side in the final moments of the series.
Ex-RRQ Philippines standout Nathaniel "Nexi" Cabero took the spotlight in the series as its MVP with a 300 average combat score (ACS) and racking up an average of 19 kills, on top of 2 assists. He sat out the Pearl map, before making his debut on the Icebox and Haven maps using Killjoy.
Meanwhile, Riley "Witz" Go, Johnty "JA" Aronte and Deko "Papichulo" Evangelista made their VCT Challengers debut with NAOS Esports with a reverse-sweep against SR Nacague to close out the opening day matches.
NAOS conceded a eco round-laden Pearl map (13-9), before forging identical 13-7 scorecards on Ascent and Icebox.
Witz made his presence felt as the series MVP, racking up a 237.33 average combat score and averaging 17 kills and 7 assists. The ex-Team Secret player assumed the initiator role with Skye and Sova in the first two rounds before using controller agent Harbor on the Icebox map.