While the first day of the Esports Championship Series group stages was rife with upsets and exciting matches, the second day eschewed the upsets in favor of incredibly close matches filled with intense action. OpTic Gaming and SK Gaming were the two teams left standing once the dust settled on the second day of competition en route to the $250,000 first prize.Group A: OpTic Gaming takes the tough roadWhile OpTic did eventually break through to the semifinals, the road there certainly wasnt the easiest. Their day began with a matchup against their North American brethren in Cloud9. The series began with Dust 2, where Cloud9 picked up an easy 16-8 win. Cloud9 looked to continue their dominating ways in Game 2 on Overpass, finishing the first half with a 12-3 lead, but OpTic would wake up and make their presence known. OpTic won all 13 rounds played in the second half, picking up a spectacular 16-12 win to force a decisive Game 3 on Cache. In a repeat of Game 2, OpTic found themselves down big at the half before storming back. While OpTic needed an overtime period this time, NAs resident Cinderella story finally put Cloud9 away to move on to a date with FaZe Clan.OpTic managed to break out of their pattern of slow starts in the deciding match of Group A. In this series against FaZe, it was OpTic who would consistently start strong with leads in the first half. In Game 1 it was a 10-5 lead that OpTic turned into a 16-10 win. While OpTic began Game 2 with a 12-3 lead, they were unable to hold on against a determined FaZe side. Philip aizy Aistrup and Aleksi allu Jalli helped FaZe punch through the Green Wall with 12 straight wins between the end of regulation and overtime to take the map 19-15. Whereas many teams would have been mentally broken after such a tough loss, OpTic came back with renewed energy in Game 3 on Cache, essentially waltzing their way to a 16-4 win to take the series.Group B: SK Gaming prevails in the endWhile SK Gaming had to battle through the lower bracket of Group B, they still managed to secure a spot in the semifinals. The road there started with an easy series for SK, as Immortals didnt really put up that much of a fight until the very end. Things started off on Cache where SK took the map by a score of 16-9, with Fernando fer Alvarenga coming in clutch with a strong 27/16 KD (kills/deaths) and 111.7 ADR (average damage per round). Game 2 on Train - usually SKs best map by far - was a much closer affair. Things went back and forth for most of the game before SK took control and closed out the 16-14 win. Despite finishing with a negative KD, stand-in Ricardo fox Pacheco came up with a few kills in the final few rounds that pushed SK ahead to the Group B decider match.The last match of the day for SK against Team Dignitas wasnt as easy as their series from earlier in the day. SK got off to a 1-0 lead in the series with a big 16-9 win on Cache, where Marcelo coldzera David posted a 27/12 KD and a 107.5 ADR. In stark contrast, the second game on Mirage is one that SK will want to purge from their memory, as they looked flustered all game while Dignitas picked up an easy 16-7 win to force a Game 3. While the match was hotly contested until the very end, SK stabilized late with five straight round wins to secure a 16-10 victory over Dignitas that punched SKs ticket to the semifinals.With one final day of competition left, only four teams are left to duke it out for the combined $750,000 prize pool. 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Spiller left Week 3s 27-20 loss to the New York Jets with a thigh injury, but fully practiced with the team all week and expects to be ready to go on Sunday.SPARTA, Ky. -- Kentucky Speedway has changed, and we probably wont know whether its for the better until a full weekend of racing has been completed.Thanks to a repave and a mild reprofiling of Turns 1 and 2, almost everything that competitors have learned since the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series started running there in 2011 has been thrown out. For all practical purposes, Kentucky is a brand-new racetrack, to the joy of some and the disappointment of others.Its a totally different race track, for sure, 2013 Kentucky winner Matt Kenseth?said. Id say its basically like starting over.Almost since it opened in 2000, Kentucky was notorious for its bumpy surface. While that created difficulty in setting up cars to handle, it also provided much of the tracks character. The 1.5-mile oval some 35 miles south of Cincinnati was also famous for its weepers and was known as one of the most difficult tracks to dry and make race-ready after periods of rain.Coarser asphalt and a revised aggregate base, along with south-end banking increased from 14 to 17 degrees, are expected to provide relief from the drainage problems. The other major change to the track is a wider pit lane exit and resultant narrower entry to Turn 1, where the width has been reduced from 72 to 56 feet.About a dozen teams tested the new surface for Goodyear on June 13 and 14, prompting the tire maker to change to a slightly harder right-side compound for the Cup Series to address concerns about the potential for excessive wear.We spent two days testing here and obviously Goodyear needed to make some adjustments to the tires coming back to make them live, said?Kevin Harvick, who claimed pole position based on owner points after qualifying for the Quaker State 400 was rained out Friday.As weve gone through practice, we havent had any tire issues so far. But it changed things a lot with the feel in the car and the things you want in the car. So weve scrambled a little bit, and hopefully getting a little more practice will be beneficial because we still arent exactly where we need to be in terms of balance and whats going to happen the longer you run the car.Harvick admitted that he and crew chief Rodney Childers took a conservative approach for practice. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne both contacted the wall, and?Kyle Busch had to summon all of his skill to catch a huge tank-slapper.Youre definitely cautious just because you dont know where the limits are, and every time you go out you push or see something you havent done before, Harvick said. You start to gather a notebook in your mind about how far you can push things, how far you can hang the car out or how loose or tight the balance needs to be.The hard thing about repaves at some places is you can be overaggressive and slide up out of the groove, but here, you wind up knocking the side off the car into the fence.The rain that arrived just 20 minutes into Fridays Cup practice made things more difficult for competitors in several ways. After any track is repaved, teams need as much track time as poossible to dial in their cars to adapt to the changes.dddddddddddd In addition, having more rubber laid down on the track tends to widen the groove for the race, creating opportunities for passing.The decision to jettison qualifying in favor of additional practice time was welcomed by the drivers. Just a few days ago, NASCAR altered its rule for a qualifying rainout to set the grid by owner points, rather than practice speeds as it had been done in the past.That put Harvicks Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet on pole, with Brad Keselowskis Team Penske Ford alongside on the front row.With the major changes to the Kentucky track, Keselowski welcomed the extra practice time.The approach is to take all the Kentucky notes and run them through the shredder and start from scratch, he said, adding that he and crew chief Paul Wolfe based their car setup on what worked earlier this summer at Michigan International Speedway. Whats worked here in the past isnt even close to whats going to work here this weekend. That was pretty obvious before we got on the track and confirmed when we did.The cars are challenging to drive like we thought they would be and like we hoped they would be, Keselowski continued. Midcorner speed is way down and straightaway speed is way up, so thats a bit of a handful, but the good kind of handful that really challenges drivers and really forces drivers to really push it to the limit.Keselowski believes that the reduction in midcorner speed brought on by the low downforce package in the Cup Series has the added benefit of reducing the potential for tire issues. But he was concerned about the Xfinity Series race scheduled for Friday night.Its interesting going back and forth between the Xfinity car and the Cup car because the midcorner speed in the Xfinity car is almost 10 mph higher than the Cup car, and the Xfinity cars are just killing the tires.While the focus in the past at Kentucky was getting a car to handle over the bumps, the new challenge is to manage tire wear. With a conservative, ultrahard right-side tire and a high-grip new track surface, expect plenty of two-tire and even no-tire stops Saturday night as teams try to gain track position through pit strategy.The Friday rain didnt help things in that respect.It definitely will make the groove narrower, which is a shame, Keselowski said. The tire on the car this weekend really isnt laying down the rubber that would make the groove wider and wider.It is what it is. We all deal with the same thing and well get through it.One thing the drivers wont have to endure this year is the physical pounding they used to take at the roughest oval on the NASCAR tour. Some of them say theyll miss the bumps and the character they contributed to Kentucky, but Harvick isnt one of them.It feels great, to tell you the truth, Harvick said. My neck doesnt hurt; it doesnt pound your heels and your neck to the point where you cant hardly walk for two days. ' ' '