League of Legends: LCS Week 7, Day 1 predictions

With only three weeks remaining in the LCS season, who should be favored to win the first day’s slate of League of Legends matches?

Today’s LCS schedule is pretty top-heavy, with two very competitive (or at least important) matches headlining the day as 100 Thieves and Golden Guardians face C9 and TSM, respectively. Both the Thieves and Guardians need to secure some much-needed wins as the North American League of Legends season winds down.

More from LCS

• EMENES retires following leave from Cloud9, cites military service
• EMENES Donezo Manifesto: Former Cloud9 Midlaner airs out grievances
• C9 Jojopyun: LCS superstar to Cloud9 after “a huge series of events”
• EG Sheiden reportedly staying on Evil Geniuses as starting jungler
• 2023 LCS Summer Split Awards – LCS All-Pro Team

Further down the card, we have some more one-sided matches between CLG/FlyQuest, Liquid/Clutch, and Echo Fox/OpTic. All of the favored teams will be looking to take this chance to pad their position in the standings, but are there any chances for an upset?

Cloud9 (8-4) vs. 100 Thieves (5-7)

It’s still insane that the Thieves were considered dead and buried, their season finished, only a few short weeks ago following their 0-5 start. But despite their improvements since then, it seems unlikely that they’ll be able to match a C9 team that’s been one of the three best in the LCS throughout the summer.

In particular, Cloud9 outclasses the Thieves heavily in their early game prowess, with C9 averaging a 504 gold advantage at 15 minutes and 100 Thieves averaging an LCS-worst 1653 gold deficit. A key match-up to watch in this game will be in the jungle, where we have the best jungler in the league (Svenskeren) vs. the worst (Amazing) according to our player power rankings.

Prediction: Cloud9

TSM (7-5) vs. Golden Guardians (6-6)

Golden Guardians managed to shake off a bad loss to FlyQuest last Saturday to win their match against CLG on Sunday. The game was anything but clean, as they were behind for most of the game and needed a massive throw from CLG to come back and win. They are still in that final playoff spot with a one-game lead over 100 Thieves, but they should be thanking their lucky stars for that throw otherwise they’d be in a tougher spot.

Speaking of throws, we have TSM who massively botched a 7k gold lead to lose to their rivals C9. The loss highlighted TSM’s only real weakness this summer: individual mistakes. Poor play (particularly by Bjergsen and Zven in those late-game fights) sunk TSM’s chances. It’s encouraging in the sense that those sorts of mistakes are easy to fix, as the team seems to have a very good macro sense, but it’s frustrating to TSM fans to see such talented players failing in this way.

The key match-up will be in the mid-lane, where Froggen and Bjergsen show down. There may not be any player in the LCS I’d trust more to hold off the pressure that Froggen and Contractz put on the mid lane than Bjerg, so it’ll be on GGS to see if they can get their best player rolling.

Prediction: TSM