LCS Playoffs Spring 2020: Previewing FlyQuest vs Evil Geniuses

League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games. /

We preview the coming contest in the LCS playoffs between FlyQuest and Evil Geniuses.

With Cloud9 awaiting in the finals of the LCS playoffs, one of Evil Geniuses (“EG”) or FlyQuest will advance to face the best team in North America. With the LCS playoffs ending this weekend, we break down which team will advance to the finals and which will see their Spring Split end one day earlier than they would like.

FlyQuest (10-8)

FlyQuest just dispatched fan-favorite and dark horse darling TSM in five games last weekend to advance in the losers bracket. In this series, the team made the decision to go with Colin “Solo” Earnest over Omran “V1per” Shoura in the top lane and the move seemed to pay off.

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Evil Geniuses (10-8)

On the other hand, Evil Geniuses is coming fresh off a loss to LCS powerhouse Cloud9 in the winner’s bracket. While they can take comfort in the fact that they managed to take a game off C9 in the eventual 3-1 series loss, there really wasn’t much to be excited about as EG was completely outclassed in the series.

In those three losses, star mid laner Daniele “Jiizuke” di Mauro went a combined 3/16/11, truly proving the “live by Jiizuke, die by Jiizuke” mantra that has guided EG this year. Now, they’ll have to hope for a better performance from their mid laner if he wants a chance for redemption.

Head-to-Head

EG won both the regular-season matches in the Spring Split before the teams finally met in the LCS playoffs. During the first-round matchup, EG was once again victorious taking a 3-1 series win.

While that series was characterized by a lot of weird picks from Jiizuke in the mid lane, Evil Geniuses were largely carried by bot laner Bae “Bang” Jun-sik. With games on Kalista and Aphelios in that series, expect his champion pool to get targetted this time around.

Key Match-Up

The mid lane is a tale of two styles. On the one side, Tristan “PowerOfEvil” Schrage has been consistently an MVP-caliber player who also has a narrow champion pool that he excels at. On the other side, Jiizuke has a champion ocean, but has been feast or famine from game to game.

I think PoE will be the better player in the series and has been the better player throughout the entire year and playoffs, so the key will be Jiizuke. If he goes into famine mode, he can gift FlyQuest wins despite the advantages they have in other lanes on the map.

Prediction: Evil Geniuses win 3-2

I think this will be a closer series than when the teams first met, largely because we got to see more of “good Jiizuke” than “bad Jiizuke.” I fear that we will see a bit more of Jiizuke getting solo-killed and dying in isolation than popping off in this series.

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That said, even if Jiizuke has an off series, I think EG just has too much talent across the other lanes to beat FlyQuest unless Jiizuke absolutely feeds. I would rate them as having a slight advantage in jungle and top, but in the bot lane they have a massive advantage with Bang and Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam. While Bang can be neutralized through the draft (ban Aphelios please) it’s just too big a mis-match to give FlyQuest a chance to win.

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