League of Legends Worlds: Top 5 quarterfinals story lines
By s. samek
Korean Return to Power
With Invictus winning the 2018 World Championship, the title is in the hands of the LPL for the first time ever. Yet, Korea has the most Worlds wins as both a region and a single team. Korea as a whole has five total Worlds titles and three titles in the pocket of SKT.
SKT returns as a group winner and drew the weakest rated team for the quarterfinals. Damwon Gaming surprised many by winning their group and they drew G2 for the quarterfinals. If both teams, win it will guarantee Korea a spot in the grand finals.
Griffin is the last of the three Korean teams, but are equally as dangerous after winning their group as well. They drew Invictus in the quarterfinals in what might be the quarterfinal matchup to watch.
Korea is showing some serious strength as a region sending all three teams out of groups as one seeds and being the only region besides Europe to have three teams in the quarterfinals. With China only sending two teams to quarters they have better odds than China to take back their title.
Korea can also send Europe home in two of the quarterfinal matchups with wins, while Griffin gets the chance to eliminate an LPL and end Invictus’ title defense. If you thought Europe had a lot at stake I’d say even more so if you’re an LCK fan.
Lower seeds making runs
Despite feeling like the underdog we do have two teams in the quarterfinals that started off in the play-in stage these two teams are Damwon Gaming and Splyce, though the way Damwon played in groups you never would have known they were a play-in team. They went 5-1 with a 2-0 record against the defending World Champion Invictus Gaming. Damwon looks to build on the momentum of a five-game winning streak heading into a match with G2.
Splyce took advantage of the “Group of Life” to earn a 4-2 record and a second seed after dropping a tiebreaker to FunPlus Phoenix. I feel like this will be the real test of how good Splyce is, the ol’ “if you want to be the best you have to beat the best” cliché when they matchup with SKT in the quarterfinals.
Next. Taking a look at the quarterfinals matchups of 2019 Worlds. dark
Regardless of the result against SKT, Splyce has performed better than they were rated and is a success story in their own right. It will be interesting to see if these two teams can match the success of G2 and Cloud9, play-in teams from last year that made the semi-finals.