G2 beat ENCE 2-0 to claim a spot in ESL Pro League Season 22 Stage 2, eliminating ENCE in the final match of the Stage 1 Swiss group. The win was tidy and decisive. G2 opened with a strong 9-3 CT half on ENCE’s map pick, Overpass, and closed that map 13-9. They then carried momentum into their Train pick, turning an 8-4 attacking half into a 13-5 finish with five of the last six rounds won on defense.
Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač led the charge for G2, both with his calling and on the server. He finished the series with a 1.52 rating and a +4.63% swing, numbers that underlined how much he influenced the pair of maps. G2’s path through Stage 1 had its ups and downs. They began with an easy 2-0 over Rooster, then dropped matches to Gentle Mates and B8 before a win over Fluxo put them into the 2-2 pool. The decisive victory over ENCE felt like a welcome stabiliser after a 3-2 record in Stage 1. On broadcast, huNter- was frank about G2’s form, saying, “We’re not satisfied with the way we went through,” while also expressing satisfaction with the clear win in the decider.
For ENCE, the loss caps a rollercoaster week. The Finnish side entered the event as a last-minute replacement and opened with wins over M80 and Astralis, but stumbles against HOTU and 3DMAX left them needing the decider to progress. Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev flagged fatigue as a factor after the match, pointing to the new VRS system and a heavy travel and online schedule. “We didn’t have off-days, so we should probably chill a bit and then get back to work,” he said.
G2 arrives in Stage 2 with momentum and a clean result against an opponent who had already shown strong form earlier in the event. ENCE will return to review what went wrong after a promising start to the tournament. What matters here is simple: G2 move on to the next phase of ESL Pro League Season 22, and ENCE’s run ends in the Stage 1 Swiss decider.
Please share your thoughts in the comments, and follow us on X and Bluesky.