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Events & Standings
4 thoughts going into LCS Spring Playoffs Week 1
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**1- C9 vs CLG**
I want to take a moment to recognize how dominant C9 has been in the regular season. Not just this regular season, but every regular season since 2013 Summer when they joined the league. There was only 1 split (2015 Summer) where they missed the playoffs. They’ve finished 1st in the standings 5 times, and from 2018 Summer to 2013 Spring, they’ve only finished outside the top two twice. It’s such an incredible run of dominance.
It should also come as no surprise when Cloud9 cleans up in LCS awards voting. I personally placed Fudge/Blaber/Emenes/Berserker on my LCS 1st team, and placed Zven on my LCS 2nd team. There will definitely be some debate about whether Emenes played enough games to warrant it, but in general, the team was dominant all split long. They will enter the playoffs as resounding favorites.
CLG, on the other hand, is the underdog. They’ve only recently pulled their franchise out of the LCS basement and again are faced with a first round matchup against C9. Interestingly enough, these two teams played in the first round of the 2022 Summer Playoffs and C9 walked away with a 3-2 victory. C9 vs CLG is also the matchup where 9 of the 10 players remain the same as they were in the last playoffs.
Somehow, CLG has played C9 closer than almost anyone else in the LCS across the past year.
*Prediction: C9 3-1*
**2- FLY vs 100T**
This is the matchup that is going to see the most difference in series predictions. On one hand, you have the hottest team in the LCS in 100T. They’ve won 7 games in a row and in the past two weeks took themselves from “probably missing playoffs” to “alone in 3rd seed”.
What’s most interesting about 100T’s winning streak is how good they’ve been in the late game. Of their 7 wins, they’ve actually been DOWN more than 2000 gold at 20 minutes in 3 of them. They’ve just managed to play well enough in teamfights and in clutch moments to keep the winning streak alive. What this means though – is they still aren’t blowing people out in the early game. If they’re going to beat FlyQuest they’re going to have to do it in the late game.
Why has FlyQuest been struggling? FLY finished tied with C9 at 14-4 and the only thing separating them is the tiebreaker game which C9 won handily. There’s a big case to be made that FLY is getting slept on going into the playoffs. With that being said, they are 6-3 in the 2nd round robin (6-4 if you count the tiebreaker) and early season MVP candidate Prince has had a handful of poor games and in my opinion, will no longer win the MVP award.
Looking at the FlyQuest gold graphs they’ve actually remained a fairly consistent team when compared to their first round robin – the only change has been less successful early games. If they are even in gold or have a lead – they are still winning all of their games. While most eyes point to Eyla for the reason their performance has declined, I’d say that Vicla has had much more inconsistent performances in the 2nd half as well.
For me, the series will come down to teamfighting, and it’s really hard for me to put a team with Impact and Prince as the losers in that kind of series… It’s also really hard to see a team with Doublelift and Bjergsen who are on a 7-game win streak coming into the playoffs. So what’s it going to be?
*Prediction: FLY 3-2 (Prince is too good)*
**3- EG**
The most dangerous 10-8 team heading into the playoffs since… last playoffs, I guess. I noticed that in 2022, EG won the Spring Split after going 9-9 in the regular season, then C9 won the Summer Split after going 10-8. So while it’s easy to look at the bracket right now and think C9 and FLY are going to be the ones contending for the title because they are towering over everyone else at 14-4, none of that matters once Bo5s start.
EG need to forget about the last 2 weeks of the Spring Split as they head into playoffs. Jojo has been sick, and the entire team played remote due to an abundance of caution for week 8. It’s no question in my mind that that has negatively impacted their performance. There are just so many unknowns for this team. I don’t know if they’re going to be healthy for the upcoming week. I don’t know if their team chemistry is boom (they’ve been more inconsistent than ever this split). What I do know is that their peak is very, very high, and they still have a chance to win the split.
**4- GG**
This is an extremely funny but also disappointing story for GG. They were 8-4 and then lost 4 of their last 5 to fall to 6th place, while failing to win 10 games in a split yet again. Still, after 11 splits in the LCS they have yet to finish a split with a win rate better than 50%. We were so ready for them to be good. They still might be good. But going into playoffs on this kind of losing streak and then facing a possible first round exit would sting badly.
