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Team Secret sent OG to the lower brackets with their opening Dota 2 series in TI 10 main stage on October 13.
OG, the defending TI champions, are the only three-time hopefuls at the premier Dota 2 annual championship. Their '3peat' dream will be a fierce struggle through a stacked lower bracket ladder.
In their first lower bracket series of the tournament, they whitewashed Quincy Crew, thanks largely to unparalleled performances from the OG midlaner, Topias "Topson" Taavitseinen.
At the end of his final Dota 2 series in TI 10, YawaR wishes SumaiL good luck
One interesting point of the OG vs Quincy Crew match-up was that their respective carries, Syed Sumail "SumaiL" Hassan and Yawar "YawaR" Hassan, are brothers.
The younger brother, SumaiL, is the more famous Dota 2 prodigy, and became the youngest player to win TI in 2017. On the other hand, the farthest YawaR has ever gone in TI is an 8th place finish in TI 8 playing with VGJ.Thunder. The two brothers had also briefly shared QC colors when SumaiL was brought in as a stand-in for Quinn "CCnC" (currently "Quinn") Callahan for ESL One Hamburg 2019.
It was perhaps a bittersweet moment for SumaiL when YawaR, right after Quincy Crew called GG, wrote 'gg gl lil bro'.
Quincy Crew, mostly built from the 2019 Newbee TI roster, proved themselves to be among the NA powerhouses with their 1st place NA DPC finish leading up to the AniMajor.
Along with most NA teams, however, Quincy Crew struggled throughout the group stage, etching out a lower bracket spot after a 3-way draw at the bottom of the group B table. After eliminating Team Aster in a lower-bracket best-of-one elimination round, they had shown some promise but could not outclass OG when it mattered.
Ousted from the lower bracket, OG proved again that they work best under pressure. Despite early dominance in a challenging first game against Quincy Crew, OG squeezed out a comeback. OG's greatness comes from their adaptability in the face of adversity, a quality rarely seen even in tier-1 Dota 2.
When Quincy Crew curtailed the game impact of SumaiL's carry Luna by repeatedly hunting him down, Topson could step up to the occasion. He almost single-handedly won OG their first game in the best-of-three Dota 2 series with a 20-4-13 KDA. This is not a feat that Quincy Crew could replicate when the tables were turned in the second game, where Topson again dominated on his first mid Dawbreaker pick in TI 10.
The odds for each team to win Dota 2 TI 2021 can be found here.
