Of course all that matters is the score point, as it measures your ranking over the entire course of the "season" as opposed to just at the final moment. If you maintained a good rank throughout the season, you will have a good score and qualify.

Rank matters because that's the only way to get score points.

And while I got knocked out in round 1 by ptws, I did qualify in S2-S12 group of LA server as a ftp @rank 72.
Never bought a match, in fact I didn't even need to use all my matches, using different amounts depending on what happened that day, average of I think 3 a day is used.

I would like to point out that this is not strictly true. It is POSSIBLE that the 128th place in pt ranking have a higher pt/day average than what the 128th rank can earn.
This can happen if there is a fair amount of fluidity on ranking for the specific server group. To give an simple example, think 15 players who take "turns" being the 1st to 10th place and 131 to 135th place. Those 15 players will have higher pts than people who are ALWAYS in 124th to 128th rank, and thus bump them out.
That said, realistically such extreme examples are unlikely, but some fluidity in the 90 to 130/140 rank could still cause a more "even" point distribution such that a "stable" 128th player is bumped out.

That said, if a player is truly "good" and gets to say top 110 consistently, then it's extremely unlikely that they get bumped out. So in the end, anyone who is bumped out is still bumped out due to their own inabilities.

And my point is that it's even possible that he was at 119, which is within 120-80, ALL the time and still be knocked out. Somewhat unlikely, but possible.
And frankly, an equal measure of 150 and 119 will almost certainly knock anyone out, so your statement would not have been correct either way.