By Jan Marcus Motevirgen
The Selangor Red Giants are now a win away from advancing to the MPL Malaysia Season 12 finals while Team SMG and RSG Malaysia are set to dispute one of the lower bracket finals slots on Saturday after falling to their respective opponents in the upper bracket semifinals at the Sri Putra Hall.
The Red Giants, led by Filipinos Michael “Arcadia” Bocado, Red “Super “Red” Bordeos, and Archie “Pancake” Guevarra scored a massive upset against Deomark “Mikko” Tabangay and Kenneth “Saxa” Fedellin to secure at least a third-place finish in Season 12.
This is the first time in franchise history that Selangor stepped into the upper bracket finals after getting booted out as early as the quarterfinals last season.
Despite struggling to secure kills in Game 1, the Red Giants managed to pull off a massive 30-minute win in Game 1 with Ilman “Super Gojes” Zulkfli’s X-borg saving the day with a Lord steal during the 27th minute.
Team SMG tried to hold off Selangor but the minions kept spawning at the right moment for the latter, who eventually sealed the deal by completing a four-man wipe that left Mikko all alone to defend their base.
From there, the Red Giants dominated Game Two to complete the series sweep.
With no Retribution available for Team SMG following the fall of Saxa’s Baxia, Selangor easily secured the fourth Lord of the contest before locking onto the opposing side’s base turret en route to a 14-10 win.
The top-ranked RSG Malaysia, on the other hand, fell prey at the hands of HomeBois, 2-1, earlier in the day.
RSG MY, which houses both Jhonard “Demonkite” Caranto and Dale “Stowm” Vidor, continued to struggle against third seed HomeBois – the lone team that defeated them in the eliminations – in the playoffs.
Wahyu “RAIZEL” Saputra on Bruno emerged as the star in Game 1 with a perfect 6-0-3 KDA before the duo of Stowm (Edith) and Muhammad “RIPPO” Halim (Khaleed) spearheaded RSG MY’s Game 2 win to deny a sweep.
RIPPO finished the second game with two kills and eight assists while Stowm had two kills and nine assists against two deaths.
RSG MY then failed to sustain its momentum, losing three heroes in the final clash of Game 3 that allowed HomeBois to take the enhanced Lord and eventually, finish off the match.
Arcadia, Super Red, and Pancake will take on HomeBois for the first finals slot on Saturday while Team SMG will clash against RSG Malaysia in the lower bracket finals on the same day.
