Aurora notched its second straight victory over one of last season’s powerhouse squads, pulling off a 2-1 reverse sweep against ONIC Philippines in Week 2 of the MPL Philippines Season 16 on Saturday at the Green Sun Hotel in Makati City.
Fresh from a rousing win against defending champion Team Liquid PH, Aurora followed it up with another thrilling triumph, this time over the reigning M-Series champions, to climb to solo third in the standings.
Similar to their past matches, Aurora once again delivered superb early game exploits but failed to properly capitalize, leading to the Game 1 mishap.
“Parang three weeks pa lang talaga kaming nagpapractice. Meron pa kaming inaayos na ibang part. Siguro by the coming weeks, maayos din namin yung pagclose ng game,” explained head coach Aniel “Master the Basics” Jiandani on Aurora’s late game struggles.
“May iba kasi kaming tinututukan muna. Nagagawa naman nila. Tingin ko konting adjustment pa. Konting practice pa tingin ko pagdating dun, mas malilinis talaga namin yung ginagawa namin.”
Kelra (Moskov) sparked ONIC’s opening-game comeback with a crucial lord steal at the 19th minute, allowing the Sonics to regain map control after being on the defensive for most of the early game.
ONIC eventually sealed the opener at the 22nd minute, with Kelra applying pressure in the dead lane during the lord dance, setting up King “K1NGKONG” Perez (Yi Sun-shin) to secure the objective and clinch the win.
But Aurora bounced back in Game 2, once again dominating the early stages.
This time, Kenneth “Yue” Tadeo (Kimmy) made sure his squad never surrendered control, finishing with a flawless 5-0-4 KDA to even the series.
Aurora once again established a commanding early game lead in Game 3 that they never conceded behind Edward “Edward” Dapadap’s (Lapu-Lapu) aggressive attacks to seal the series win.
The 20-year-old exp laner compiled two kills and six assists without conceding a single death as Aurora finished off ONIC in 17 minutes with a lopsided 12-3 kill score.
Despite the loss, ONIC remained at second owing to superior tiebreaker over Aurora.
