RLCS X: Winter Split (Week 4) Standout Players Of The Week
What happened to Team BDS? Standout players and teams happened. The majority French side was pushed repeatedly, and on Sunday night they crumbled against Top Blokes and Team Queso. Meanwhile, in North America, Rogue has continued to push the established top four but this time failed to break into the top four placements. Here are the playmakers and shot-takers that made this week memorable.
5. Dylan “eekso” Pickering - Galaxy Racer
It should come as no surprise that the highest shooting player in the European Regional is in my list of standout players. The Brit got no less than a spicy 4.1 shots per game, and the only other player in the top twelve teams that got close was Team Queso’s Sergio "AtomiK" Pérez Cortés (3.9). The utility of those shots was questionable at best though, less than a third of those shots were converted into goals either directly or by virtue of Mitchell "Mittaen" Driessen or Ario "arju" Berdin nailing a redirect or rebound.
4. Alexandre “Taroco” Reis Pedrogam - Rogue
Rogue was smurfing in their The Grid group until they faced a very beatable Spacestation Gaming, who had been playing with their food all evening and even dropped a series against Alpine. In the end, Rogue lost that tightly fought series 3-1, and the next day in the quarter-finals they lost in similar fashion against G2 Esports (3-2, game five overtime).
- Related - RLCS X Team Of The Week: Top Blokes
Taroco definitely isn’t known for being the flashiest of players, but the newbie’s well-rounded playstyle held his side together - top ten for goals (0.9) and assists (0.7) per game, top fifteen for saves (1.76) and crucially top five for shots (3.5). As I say on broadcast and in writing all the time, the team that can apply the most pressure should win the game, and shot counts are the greatest indication of that.
3. Evan “M0nkey M00n” Rogez - Team BDS
Another of the all-rounders on my list this week is BDS’s M0nkey M00n. Although the team didn’t live up to Europe’s lofty expectations, this man kept his consistency, matching this week’s Standout Player of the Week on everything except assists (M0nkey M00n only got 0.6 per game, which is still well above the competition average).
Click to enlarge2. Justin “jstn” Morales - NRG Esports
I promise I’ll try to find someone else to include next week, but if this were football jstn would already have a decent collection of FIFA Ultimate Team in-forms. This is his third week in the top five and for good reason - he was unrivalled in terms of shots (4.2) and saves (2.4) per game. That’s not to say he wasn’t helping on NRG’s offensives though; he played a role in almost 60% of his team’s goals, impressive for a team that requires only 70% of their goals to be assisted.
1. Archie “archie” Pickthall - Top Blokes
On the flipside, Top Blokes dominance last weekend may well have been down to their team play on offence, 88% of their goals were assisted, and Archie was part of nearly two-thirds of them, helped largely by a huge 0.85 assists per game. I mentioned earlier that M0nkey M00n and archie had almost nothing to separate them so here’s a closer look:
The two were tied exactly on shots (3.6) and goals (0.8) per game.
M0nkey M00n had a few more shots per game than archie (2.3 > 2.2).
Archie received (on average) 15 more points on the scoreboard than M0nkey M00n (475 vs 460)
There was hardly anything in it, but this time, archie is my Standout Player of the Week. Congratulations!
Archie, M0nkey M00n, and eekso return tonight at 5pm GMT in week two of the European edition of The Grid, while the second North American Regional Event begins tomorrow at 6pm GMT.
In the meantime, stay tuned at GGRecon for more news, interviews, and features.
Images via WorldGaming Network |Team BDS
