EPTSPOTV Starleague 2015 Season 1
Ro16 Group D:
Dark, TY, Dream, Maru
Brackets and standings on Liquipedia
Starcraft II Starleague
Hopes and Dreams
by The_Templar
The Naver Starleague’s Ro16 draws to a close tonight with an extremely anticipated group. While none of the four players playing this evening are rookies, they all find themselves at a stage of their career where extra pressure is put on them to do well, for completely different reasons. Additionally, every player in this group is simultaneously participating in the Ro16 of the GSL after advancing from the initial group stage; along with Life and Rogue, they all have the chance to cement themselves in history with a spectacular double championship.
SKT_Dark's stock has sharply increased in the recent months. After nearly two years of relatively few results to speak of—the most prominent being a single qualification for Challenger League—Dark suddenly stepped up and strung together three solid Code S appearances in 2014. He quietly defeated established and far more well-known players in 
Dear, 
Bbyong, and Avenge but never made a playoffs run. This performance, combined with a 6-3 performance in Proleague and surprising victories in side tournaments, made Dark into an individual league dark horse. This newfound reputation quickly changed, however. It’s not exactly clear when the SKT Zerg made the transformation from a potential threat to a real one, but a double qualification for the two Korean leagues, a stunning start in Proleague, and continued top-level performance in GSL and NSSL leave no doubt that he’s currently one of the hottest players in Korea.KT_TY had a similar path to Dark, but instead of putting on a worthy performance under the spotlight, he faltered and looked weaker. TY’s significantly slower ascension was marked by strong performances in qualifiers and online tournaments as well as Proleague. As a regular player on KT’s roster for over a year, TY has historically been at worst their third most performing player behind Flash and later Zest. More recently, TY skillfully took down Dark and MyuNgSiK among others to earn top four in South Korea’s WECG qualifiers. However, this tournament marked the beginning of TY’s repeated failure under pressure. He was brutally demolished 0-3 by Stats and Sora to finish his WECG run, lost in a similar fashion against Losira at the HomeStory Cup X a month later, narrowly fell out of his Hot6iX Cup group, and failed to bring KT several crucial victories in Proleague, which directly led to several team losses and close calls. On top of this mountain of recent disappointment, TY is currently sick to the point that he wasn’t able to attend yesterday’s GSL group selection, which gives him a disadvantage in this extremely difficult group.On the other hand,
SKT_Dream is surprisingly making a resurgence going into this group. He appeared to have had a routine and not notable career on MVP, which was never marked with any performances of interest save a single second place finish at an IEM in 2013. Like many others, Dream qualified for Code A numerous times and even made Code S once, a run which was cut short as quickly as possible. He performed moderately well in team leagues, in particular the Acer TeamStory Cup, but could rarely be called the MVP of his team. Eventually, he started failing to qualify for Code A and slowly faded into the past, until he happened to join SKT. His path to a double Ro16 occurring several months later has been marked with impressive TvZ, which may help him against Dark should he face his Zerg teammate. While the SKT Terran’s group is one of the most difficult ones he could ask for, advancing here would make the possibility of a strong double playoffs run less of a dream and more of a reality.JinAir.Maru is the only one in this group to taste premier gold, and he has remained in the upper echelon of Terran players for two years. Although Maru is also the only player coming off of IEM Taipei, the tournament was relatively close, had few Terrans, and was several days ago, meaning the only player this leaves him potentially weak to is Dark. Other than IEM, however, Maru’s recent history is simply a much stronger version of the other two Terrans in this group. Although he did run into difficulties in Code S, his only recent losses have been against PartinG and Life, neither of whom are factors in this group. Maru’s TvT, however, may be questionable, with barely more than a few recent BO1 wins against Bbyong and MarineKing and a close call against Hack to judge.Predictions:
Dark’s ZvT has looked flawless in recent weeks and it’s hard to see him not advancing from a group with three Terran players in it. While Maru may give him some trouble, neither of the other Terrans have shown anything in the past 1-2 months that may suggest one of them could take a Bo3 off of him. As Dark is extremely likely to take the first spot, the rest of the group will likely be determined by TvT, a matchup which nobody here is very adept in. While Maru’s TvT is presently inscrutable, Dream has recently lost 0-2 to both of the other Terrans in the group without defeating anyone more notable. TY is normally favored in the mirror, having defeated both of them as well as Bomber despite a scarring loss to Guilty, but his illness does not bode well in this group and he could easily drop out to both.
TY 0-2 Dark
Dream 0-2 Maru
Dark 2-1 Maru
TY 1-2 Dream
Maru 2-1 Dream
