Aurora outclass JiJieHao to reach EWC playoffs

kyxsan's troops march into the top-16 stage after a comfortable victory.

Aurora locked up a spot in the Esports World Cup playoffs in sizzling fashion as they soundly beat JiJieHao in a one-sided affair.

It's the end of the road for Dionis "⁠sinnopsyy⁠" Budeci 's side, who burned brightly in their best-of-one upset against Spirit but quickly flamed out, averaging just five rounds per map across their series against GamerLegion and Aurora .

"We came to Paris just hoping to make it through the LCQ," JiJieHao coach Torbjørn "⁠mithR⁠" Nyborg said after the match. "Making a good result at the LCQ would have been enough. Then we go to the main tournament, we get an upset against Spirit. We played so well in that game, everyone was trading each other. I don't know what happened exactly.

"We'll need to look at it. We need to be proud that we made it to the main tournament. There are some important lessons here. While we're not ready for tier-1, there are definitely things that we can take away from this to improve even more for the next ones."

JiJieHao won both pistol rounds on their map pick of Mirage but were otherwise overwhelmed by Aurora 's superior firepower as the Turkish-majority team cruised to a 13-6 victory.

Aurora 's dominance continued on Anubis, where JiJieHao were often found lacking in mid-round situations in the first half. Once again unable to string rounds together on the T side, sinnopsyy 's troops were left facing a six-round deficit at the end of the first half.

More misery was to come for JiJieHao , who lost the ensuing pistol round to a well-timed molotov. One round was all that they could muster on the CT side as Aurora quickly finished the game off with a quad-kill from Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş .