HuK, Apocalypse, ByuL, Polt

DarkLordOlli

WCS America plays its final Ro16 group tonight as HuK goes up against Apocalypse and ByuL takes on reigning champion CMStorm_Polt.

Credit where it's due

A handful of old school players have recently picked up the slack again - MMA and MC being the most notable examples - but one has gone rather unnoticed again. While not playing up to past championship levels, EG.HuK has been doing very well for himself over the last few months. He made top 16 at two DH tournaments, and in WCS he managed to go 4-1 in his Challenger group over two Korean Terrans in Ryung and TheStC. He then continued his run with two consecutive wins over MajOr and Chinese player Top in Premier to advance to the Ro16.

Also, his twitter has been pumping out a lot more positive tweets than usual. That might indicate that HuK is currently feeling good about his game - and he's got every reason to. He might not be a top level contender at the moment but he's in the middle of a long stretch of consistent, solid performances. And who knows, maybe all it takes is for him to keep riding this wave and his results might jump again. Playing Apocalypse first in HuK's statistically strong PvT is certainly a good place to begin.

Speaking of whom, lvD.Apocalypse finally gets to play a North American Protoss not named Chad "Morgan Freeman" Jones. For some strange reason Apocalypse keeps running into the ROOT Protoss during his WCS runs, and Apocalypse trails slightly in the head to head record at 5 - 6. What? A Korean who has a losing head to head record against an American?

Given Apocalypse's strengths and weaknesses, it's not that strange. He's got fairly strong TvT that can hang with the better Koreans, but he struggles in the other two matchups. That makes this draw a tough one for him as there's just one Terran in this group, and that Terran has even better TvT. But Apocalypse is no stranger to surprising in WCS America. Few expected him to make it to the Ro16 twice this year, yet here he is, looking to cause even more surprises.

LG-IM_ByuL enters the group as a popular dark horse pick for not just Mr.Bitter, but many avid viewers of WCS America. Ever since entering the tournament through the online qualifier last season, ByuL has dropped a grand total of one map on his path to the Ro16. MajOr, Tilea, Ryung, Arthur and Hack all fell victim to the IM Zerg. Can you blame me for picking him to advance through this group as well?

And then there's CMStorm_Polt! For the sake of keeping things interesting, it would be nice if there was a way to make Polt not seem like a tremendous favorite to win this group. But honestly, there's nothing negative to say except maybe "well, school started again."

Looking through Polt's recent match history, I quickly noticed that the last Bo3 series he lost was at the Season 2 Finals against IM_First, and that was two months ago. After that the American hero has played 15 series against players such as MMA, Daisy, Revival, Sage, HuK, Revival again, Shine, Stork and more. All in all he went 15 - 0 in series and 31 - 6 in maps. SO THERE, Polt is the favorite to win this group.

Predictions!

HuK > Apocalypse
Polt > ByuL
HuK < Polt
Apocalypse < ByuL
HuK < ByuL

Polt and ByuL advance to the Ro8!