League of Legends LCS semifinal preview Cloud9 vs. CLG – perfectly balanced
By Josh Tyler
The season series
Their first match-up came in Week 4 as both teams were surging out to strong starts to the split. Cloud9 ultimately prevailed in an evenly-contested match that was broken open at the 20-minute mark when C9 took a four-kill lead over CLG with a dive onto the mid lane tower. From then, C9 just played the macro game perfectly and cruised to a 35-minute win.
But in Week 7, CLG would get their revenge in a fairly odd matchup. This game was famously kicked off by Licorice getting a pre-five minute solo kill on Ruin as Malphite. However, CLG’s bot lane began to turn the game around in their favor.
At the 12-minute mark, Stixxay on Sona and Biofrost on Tahm Kench outplayed a 3v2 gank, buying enough time for the rest of CLG to rotate to the fight, take the fight, and take the first tower. From there, CLG just continued to apply pressure with that dynamic duo as well as the poke threat of Ruin’s Jayce and PowerofEvil‘s Corki. Once they used this advantage to take Baron, it was GG for C9.