I put C9 as 2nd Seed out of good faith for my boys in blue, but what came out was not what I was expecting.

As many did, I had Gen.G in first seed, expecting the defending champions to outperform the "Group of Death" and dominate. RNG was third, still out of hope for C9 to clutch up. And Vitality, I had little hope in, placing them at the fourth seed, unfortunate but seemingly necessary at the time with 3 rookies on their team, and an iffy coach.

Gen.G did not perform like a World Champion team, and I'm puzzled by their performance. I saw on one of the post-game threads, someone said Gen.G was nothing without SKT to face, and I think that's spot on.

As for Vitality, I couldn't have asked for a better performance from that team. As a diehard NA fan, good job EU. You performed much better than anyone expected, and showed up the haters.

RNG wasn't a big surprise to most. Uzi is arguably one of the best players in the world, being #1 on many players lists. Uzi and the rest of RNG played better than I thought they would, but thank the lord, C9 got a game off of them.

And finally, my completely unbiased view on C9's performance. Hot damn, I didn't stay up to watch these games live, but imagine my excitement when I opened up my eSports app to see C9 1-0 VIT, C9 1-0 GEN.G, and C9 1-0 RNG. I did catch the end of the tiebreaker, and I was still proud of my boys. I had doubts about C9 when Jensen, Sneaky, and Smoothie were benched, but Reapered knew what he was doing, and it most certainly paid off.

Reapered deserves so much credit for the success the team is earning because he knows the game so well. He knows the team so well. He knows the competition so well. All the players on C9 have played so far past my hopes for them, and I'm hoping that we don't see another Quarters exit to a KR/CN top-tier team.