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10 thoughts going into LCS Spring Week 7
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1- With FLY’s loss to EG this past week they are now only 1 game ahead of C9 for 1st place, and for the first time in a while people are considering that they might not be the best team in the LCS. Prince had his worst game as an LCS player too, going overaggressive on Aphelios and dying multiple times when EG changed priority mid-fight. It’s definitely a reminder that you can’t win a split in the first 5 weeks of the regular season.
I’m talking more to the fans that wanted to preemptively crown FlyQuest than I am to the actual team though. In speaking with their players, they seem to have the right mindset that they still have a lot to improve on and some intense competition ahead. It appears that they are one of those teams that only wins about half of their scrims – which is a bit surprising for a team with an 85% LCS win rate thus far.
One other story to track this week is that if they go 2-0 and move to 13-2, it will secure them at least 13 wins for the split, which would rank this as their most successful regular split as an organization in the LCS.
2- It feels like C9 is turning it up as the season progresses. Their draft and game versus 100T was the most impressive. C9 managed to get 3 winning lanes as well as a winning jungle matchup and then basically played perfectly, never giving 100T a window to make an aggressive move in the game. It’s also the more aggressive style that I tend to favor when Bo5s roll around. Generally speaking, conservative scaling drafts work well to generate maximum wins in Bo1 round robin, but making aggressive proactive plays will lead to more losses in Bo1 and a higher chance of winning versus good competition later on.
Listening to Zven’s most recent interview with Travis Gafford, their aggressive play might be a bit more of a coincidence than a master plan to scale towards playoffs. Emenes prefers to play lane dominant champions with laning runes, which naturally lends itself to Blaber playing more aggressive early game junglers, and the rest of the team following suit.
3- Last week was a huge week for EG. Jojo and Vulcan turned it on and played better than they have all split long, with Jojo taking home player of the week honors. Ssumday won with Garen, which was surprisingly the first time Garen had ever been played in the LCS (and also completes the LCS Pokédex), and EG look completely back on track. In fact, if they are able to beat C9 in their first game of the week, they would move all the way up to 2nd place in the standings.
Considering how hapless they looked even in their wins dating back to Week 4, it’s impressive that they were able to turn it on last week. This is also why I’ve been willing to give this team the benefit of the doubt even when they were looking poor. It’s always easier for a team who has found success in the past to find that success again, than it is for a team to find it for the first time.
4- Speaking of finding success for the first time… GG are now in uncharted territory. If they’re able to go 2-0 this week they would reach 10 wins, which would actually be the most in their org’s history for the regular season. Their franchise record 7-game win streak was broken last week by TL, and then GG was narrowly able to defeat IMT in the final game of the weekend. They definitely had a bit of a let down week after their dominant stretch.
My eyes are going to be glued to their match against 100T. Huhi has a weird double revenge match, having initially moved from GG to 100T the year after losing to Doublelift in the 2020 playoffs – now facing Doublelift and Bjergsen who are on 100T after Huhi has gone back to Golden Guardians. Ain’t life funny sometimes?
5- CLG have increased their predictability streak to 4 games, which has to be some type of record (predictability meaning they have beaten/lost to who was expected). Following that trend this should be another 1-1 week with them beating DIG and losing to EG.
One of my favorite parts of the weekend was actually rewatching the Irelia 1v1 that Dhokla played against Palafox. Dhokla completely destroyed him, but the banter between them actually felt pretty — personal? Even in a 1v1 with no stakes you could see how competitive both of them are.
On a more serious note it’s actually VERY important that CLG take care of business against DIG, because their schedule gets difficult after. They’ll finish the split versus EG, GG, TL, and C9. My predictability tracker says that they’ll win 1 of those games (versus TL) but based on TL’s inconsistency that’s not a reliable win. 7-6 looks good now, but 8-10 looks questionable for the playoffs. They need to play well and not let their guard down.
6- TSM are moving closer and closer to playoffs, which were completely unthinkable for most analysts coming into the split. In Week 6 they lost to EG but then had a very solid start to finish win against TL (moving to 2-0 versus them this split, and securing them the tiebreaker if it comes to that).
WildTurtle also looked really good in his return to the LCS. He had noticeably improved laning compared to Neo and also had a great Ezreal game versus TL. Chawy also said how much he values Turtle’s experience as they move closer to the end of the season. I expect them to keep him in the lineup moving forward.
With that being said, TSM, TL, and 100T are going to be vying for that final playoff spot. Usually you need 9 wins to have a good chance at playoffs, but this split I feel like we’ll be in a situation where 8 wins might do it. TSM currently sit at 6, and they face IMT, GG, 100T, DIG, and FLY. There are 3 wins in there if TSM plays to the level that they’ve displayed this split, so they have a bit of wiggle room yet.
7- Watching 100T during Week 6 was an interesting experience. They drafted 3 scaling lanes versus C9 and got destroyed. The next day, they drafted all early game champions to try and put CLG in the dirt early and… didn’t get ahead early and got destroyed. It’s one thing to have an 0-2 week, it’s a much worse thing to make such an aggressively hard pivot after 1 game only to lose just as badly.
It’s no surprise that 100T announced some type of change going into Week 7, with the release of their head coach Kaas. It’s almost impossible that Kaas was the cause of all of their issues, but the mere fact that they hard pivoted so quickly 6 weeks into the split between games sent a strong message that their team had no real sense of direction. Sometimes that’s on the coach, sometimes that’s on the players, but in esports, it’s always easier to change the coach.
Firing a prominent member of the team can also help to light a fire under the people still there – so now is the time for the rest of 100T to step up and actually come together as a team. They play GG and DIG this week, so if 100T is able to play to their pre-season expectations they could 2-0 and be right back in the playoff race.
8- I’m actually pretty sad lately watching TL games because I believed this roster could work. I’m naturally inclined to like CoreJJ, Yeon, and Haeri because they are all players I worked with during my time at TL and know personally. Therefore, my bias leads me to notice things that Summit and Pyosik are doing a bit more, like their poor teamfighting and inability to maintain the right lines in fights for Haeri and Yeon to do damage. But I also know with their performance being what it is, that everyone is partially at fault.
CoreJJ hasn’t been able to win on enchanters.
Haeri is rushing too much in teamfights.
Yeon can’t transition his laning leads into wins.
Also, their schedule isn’t getting any easier. In fact, they play an 11-2 FLY on Thursday and a 10-3 C9 on Friday. It’s the hardest possible Week 7 schedule. They’ve run out of time, and are now in a position where they need to beat the top teams in the LCS to stay in the hunt for playoffs.
9- I really like Bolulu. For those of you who haven’t kept up, Ablazeolive stepped down for the rest of the split last week, and Bolulu was brought up from IMT Academy. Bolulu himself has played for a while though. He actually has international experience due to playing at Worlds representing Turkey.
I don’t even really mean to talk about his resume or play though, I wanted to talk about the interview he gave after their game versus Dignitas. During that interview I could just see his passion for the game. He absolutely loves it. He still gets excited every time he gets on stage. He seemed thrilled to be in the LCS, to be in the LCS lounge for the first time. It was honestly very refreshing. I really hope to see much more Bolulu in the future of the LCS.
10- Well, they’re not technically eliminated from the playoffs but I don’t see a realistic world in which their Spring Split doesn’t end in 2 weeks. This is a situation where they want to go Summer Split fast and try not to lose their minds before that happens.
The best thing they could do is try and play without the massive weight that’s been on their shoulders from underperforming their expectations. It’s over. You’re out of the playoffs. Time to have some fun. If they can play free and without expectations, I can see them landing some upsets in their final 5 games and really messing up the splits of some of the other teams in the LCS.
