100 Thieves At League Of Legends Worlds 2021 Group Stage
The 2021 League of Legends World Championship is here, and North America sent out three teams to represent the region. Cloud9 went in as the third seed and unexpectedly qualified past the group stage, a first for the region in two years, and Team Liquid went in as the second seed after losing in the Summer Finals, this gave 100 Thieves the first seed going into the tournament.
100 Thieves, like Team Liquid, started off the Lock In tournament well, but unfortunately were knocked out prior to reaching the finals. They were able to continue this momentum in the regular season of the spring split but weren’t able to close it out. This called for midseason changes.
A swap in the mid-lane and a bringing of a new head coach was all this team needed as once in the summer, the Thieves were on in full force all the way into the playoffs. In the playoffs, they won a close 3-2 bout versus Evil Geniuses but later lost the finals qualifying match versus Team Liquid, being sent into the losers’ bracket. In the losers’ bracket, they quickly made work of Cloud9 and subsequently made quick work of Team Liquid in the finals, winning their first-ever LCS championship.
100 Thieves At Worlds Group Stage
Alongside Cloud9, 100 Thieves had it rough going into their group. And as opposed to their North American brethren, they didn’t have time to acclimate to the Worlds meta via a play-in stage.
Their group consisted of one of the tournament favourites and Chinese first seed, Edward Gaming, the Korean second seed, T1 and a Japanese team making waves as it was their first group stage visit in the region’s history, DetonatioN FocusMe. Apart from DetonatioN FocusMe, 100 Thieves had their work cut out for them, even as the first seed.
The odds stacked against them showed fairly quickly as they were not able to get a win against neither the Chinese nor Korean representatives and were only able to steal a win from DetonatioN FocusMe. This meant that in seemingly North American fashion, another North American team started their first round robin in groups winless. No wins put the LCS’ first seed in a predicament, one more loss, and they were out of the tournament early.
The Thieves had a lot of pressure on them going into the second round-robin’s start, not only did they have to go flawless and not drop a single game, but they were starting it with a match versus T1.
The match versus T1 looked manageable; a strong early-game that was pairing up T1’s gave 100T pseudo confidence. This pseudo confidence didn’t amount to much though, as when it came to the mid-game, the Thieves were completely inactive, failing to utilize their champion’s composition to their advantage. This led to an all-encompassing fight at the dragon that even though nobody died, and 100 Thieves got the dragon, T1 made the heads-up play to make their way to Baron and rush it down. This sealed the North Americans’ first seed fate. 100 Thieves got eliminated from Worlds.
With nothing to lose, 100 Thieves played with reckless abandon in their last two games of the day. This gave them a win versus DetonatioN FocusMe, but most importantly gave them a win against Edward Gaming. This win put them at 3-3, the oh so famous North American spot at Worlds.
Even though they were knocked out of the tournament early, the Thieves have much to be proud of. This season, they managed to capture their first-ever LCS champion and proudly represent the region as the first seed. Not only that, even though they had a poor showing to start, they still finished 3-3, beating Edward Gaming in their last game. This team still has a lot of growth in it and looking at what they’ve shown so far, the sky’s the limit.