League of Legends LCS finals preview: Liquid vs. Cloud9 – why C9 is poised for an upset
By Josh Tyler
Bot Lane
ADC: Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi vs. Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng
Support: Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam vs. Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in
This match-up is, honestly, an uphill battle for Cloud9. Sneaky and Zeyzal have soaked a lot of their jungler’s attention and protection for not a lot of gain. These two post some of the worst laning numbers as a duo, averaging gold, CS, and XP deficits at the ten-minute mark.
They faced a pretty solid duo last weekend in Stixxay/Biofrost. To their credit, they averaged a lead coming out of lane. Unfortunately, their leads leaving lane were far smaller than any of their teammates.
On the other end of the lane, two players who ended up in the top three when it came to MVP voting. Both CoreJJ and Doublelift were worthy of the accolade, and truthfully they likely canceled out some votes for their lane partner.
Doublelift lead all ADCs in just about every statistical category during the regular split. CoreJJ didn’t post the same statistical dominance, but he clearly elevated Doublelift and drove them to be the best laning duo in North America. While their laning numbers weren’t quite as strong in the semifinals facing the duo of Cody Sun and Vulcan, I have no doubt that they will be able to exploit the weakness of C9.
Advantage: Liquid