2022 LCS Spring Split Week 3 Day 1 Recap

Winless no longer. Monkeys fling bananas at each other – not once but twice. Closer goes Kral Mode. Morpheus goes 4-1 over Neo.

GG vs 100T

Kral Closer comes up massive in an absolute stomp over the Golden Guardians by the reigning champs. Omnipresent in the early game, Closer used his laners’ priority to invade and set up early ganks, and coupled with botched dives from the side of GG, the game quickly became GG, allowing 100 Thieves to accelerate ahead. He even snuffed out whatever chance the Golden Guardians had in that baron flip with an expert steal, and put Pridestalkr and co. out of their misery just a few minutes later.

BlogOfLegends MVP: 100T Closer (1)

TSM vs IMT

God these teams are so trash… Once again, we are treated to the exciting depths of two low level LCS teams clashing in a heroic battle that is very reminiscent of two monkeys having a banana-throwing contest with each other. Immortals jumped out with an early lead due to their intelligent sidelane play and snowballed the lead into a Baron. However IMT sololaners have yet to figure out how to play with Baron, as they threw at the nexus turrets with a botched dive, giving a shutdown over to Tactical and started their dismantlement, as TSM were able to rally around a river fight to close out the game.

While Tactical played well given the circumstances, I would like to throw Revenge under the bus for this one. He was so accelerated due to Huni’s smite top strategy, and while he was making moves with the additional gold, he did not play as aggressively as he could’ve to choke out TSM. Many times did I see him be isolated in a 1v1 with an extreme item advantage but not dive his opponent under their turret, even when IMT had full vision of the rest of the TSM players. If he played more aggressively during his splitpushes, IMT would have likely closed the game out much sooner instead of fumbling the mid lane teamfight and eventually getting embarrassed by Tactical’s pristine kiting. While this game was exciting to watch for the casuals, from a purist perspective, it was nothing but a tragedy of errors…

BlogOfLegends MVP: TSM Tactical (1)

TL vs EG

In what feels like the hottest new rivalry of this age of LCS, Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses face off again for the fifth time this year, and Team Liquid continue their winning streak against the young guns with a decisive beatdown. Bjergsen’s Veigar pick into Jojo’s Corki was very reminiscent of Nukeduck also picking the Veigar into a scaling pick and, just like Nukeduck, the G.O.A.T delivered a classic performance, picking up the MVP honors for this game. The Predator + Event Horizon combo, especially in this meta of scaling, will be a monstrous strategy moving forward and I expect Veigar to become a mainstay of the meta come Spring Playoffs. The team looks revitalized with captain CoreJJ making his first appearance after getting his green card. Team Liquid are definitely the apex predators of the LCS right now and I cannot wait for the rematch against 100 Thieves with their full-fledged roster ready to go!

BlogOfLegends MVP: TL Bjergsen (1)

DIG vs FLY

In the most unlikeliest of top-table clashes, Dignitas and FlyQuest battle it out in a fairly by-the-books game, with Josedeodo once again carrying the team with his now-signature Lee Sin. FlyQuest remains the serendipitous talk of the town as the uninspiring lineup on paper continues to wow the audience with their clean setup and accuracy of their executions. toucouille has been a very competent player in his LCS debut while aphromoo is proving to everyone that age is only a number as far as he’s concerned. With weakside Kumo and a stable ADC in Johnsun, the team that was initially slated to rebuild is coming nicely around star jungler Josedeodo, as he hopes to keep their good fortunes alive through the second round robin and into playoffs.

BlogOfLegends MVP: FLY Josedeodo (1)

CLG vs C9

Another one of the lowlight bangers which may or may not involve monkeys launching bananas, CLG finally manage to beat a coach-less Cloud9 after fumbling their immense early game lead for most of the game. Palafox was 5/0 very early into the game but it is clear as day why this team is only finding its first win now – they still have yet to learn how to leverage their gold leads and push the game to a faster pace and instead had to win with a nail-biting base race at the end of it all.

It is uncertain what is going on with Cloud9 after LS got released from the organization, albeit abruptly; Max Waldo just drafted them a standard comp where the whole team looked out of sorts with each other, with Fudge in particular having one of his worst games in recent memory. However, the talent level on this team isn’t to be trifled with, and even without LS’ crazy strats, this team is surely one to watch out for in the coming weeks.

BlogOfLegends MVP: CLG Palafox (1)