Bren Esports scored its biggest victory when it pulled off a 2-1 upset of Blacklist International in the Mobile Legends Professional League Philippines Season 10 over the weekend.
Bren, the Season 6 champion, pulled off a shocker that spoiled Blacklist's mission of becoming the first team to advance to the MPL Playoffs.
Instead, Blacklist — the M3 Mobile Legends world champion — was relegated to the No. 2 spot in the team standings of this prestigious Esports tournament.
Bren captain Angelo Kyle "Pheww" Arcangel said playing against a Playoff-bound team gave them extra fire and motivation.
"We are aware that if they win, they are going to the Playoffs," Pheww said.
"It didn't affect our style of play. It was nothing to us. Coach Duckeyyy (Francis Glindro) wanted to give back to the fans because the last time we were here, they were so quiet."
With two weeks left in the regular season, Bren had positioned itself as among the team primed for the Playoffs following its masterful conquest of Blacklist.
They are now holding a 6-5 win-loss mark with 16 points to occupy the fifth spot in the ladder.
But prior to the earthshaking upset, Bren suffered a 2-0 setback to ECHO.
It what was possibly one of the grittiest and riskiest plays of all time, ECHO pulled off a massive backdoor in Game 2 of their matchup to complete a sweep.
The backdoor was like no other that the league had seen before as ECHO team captain Tristan "YAWI" Cabrera, Karl "KarlTzy" Nepomuceno and Frederic Benedict "Bennyqt" Gonzales went charging to the Bren base without creeps yet somehow managed to survive the damage.
"In scrimms, we have been practicing going straight to base depending on our heroes," YAWI said.
"Our heroes were capable so I said: Let's try a backdoor. I told them it was backdoor-able and they were good so we were able to pull it off."
ECHO's strong play on Week 6 was followed up with yet another impressive sweep the following day against Omega Esports that earned them the second spot of the regular season with an 8-2 standing and 20 points.
"This is not (ECHO's top form yet). We still have a lot to improve," YAWI warned after beating Omega Esports.
