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It was a great weekend for the Mutineers and a surprising one for Team Vitality, both of whom are the subject of this week's Who Won The Weekend.
Florida Mutineers
Florida went on one of the best runs in a single tournament this season.
The Mutineers clutched two Game 5s against both Chicago and Dallas, teams many consider to be in the top three in the league, both with two tournament victories. The Dallas series in particular went to a Round 11. They then faced the team many consider to be the best in the league (and the standings reflect that), the Atlanta FaZe, and dispatched them in four games Sunday.
It was so incredible, it was borderline unbelievable: Maven, one of the casters of the event, mentioned that there were fewer people who picked Florida to win this event than the lowly Toronto Ultra.
Maurice "Fero" Henriquez has been an absolute force since joining the Mutineers in March, but it was a breakout performance from the new Mutineers pickup. Joseph "Owakening" Conley, in his first major Call of Duty tournament, made a massive statement, helping propel his team to its second tournament win of the season.
If Florida's first tournament victory has a tiny asterisk beside it, only because it was the first tournament of the season that was played online, with some gameplay hiccups throughout the weekend for some teams, this one leaves no doubt whatsoever. The Mutineers went through the league's three-headed monster, all in one weekend, to stake their claim in the "top spot" conversation. -- Arda Ocal
Honorable Mention: Team Vitality (LEC)
It's surprising enough that G2 Esports went 1-2 in the first week of the League of Legends European Championship summer split. More astonishing is that one of the teams they lost to was Vitality, a team that won all of two games in spring, with one of those games being a Week 9 loss to Fnatic when Fnatic support Zdravets "Hylissang" Iliev Galabov played Shen top, top laner Gabriel "Bwipo" Rau played Jarvan IV support, and the rest of the team was on off-meta solo queue picks like Graves mid and Evelynn jungle. Fnatic had already locked in their spot and Vitality could only end in last place for the year, so the game did not matter whatsoever in terms of the standings.
Coming out of the first super week of summer, Vitality are now 2-1, including a solid victory Sunday over the aforementioned champions of Europe, G2, and a Day 1 win over Schalke 04, a team some thought could be a breakout dark horse of the summer.
Part of the reason behind Vitality's significant improvement is their lineup. Support Labros "labrov" Papoutsakis joined the team for his highly anticipated LEC debut, and mid laner Aljoša "Milica" Kovandžić was finally able to get a visa to play in Berlin after being unavailable all spring. One of the LEC's strengths is bringing up young talent, and this Vitality roster is another example of that, combining rookies with the likes of veteran top laner Lucas "Cabochard " Simon-Meslet. Vitality still has a long way to go and an entire season ahead of them, but this past weekend they were one of the most entertaining and fun teams to watch in the LEC.