LCS Summer Split Playoffs - Surprise Performers, Favourites, And Disappointments
The 2020 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Summer Split was topped off with one of the best playoff brackets the North American region has ever seen.
Coming into the 2020 season, format changes were made to the LCS playoffs. These format changes brought new life to the NA region, as well as it gave second chances for teams that might’ve gone out sooner than expected — as evidenced by Team SoloMid playing a total of six series, being sent to the losers bracket in the first round, and later winning the finals. Due to the nature of the bracket, this year’s Summer Split playoffs did not disappoint - bringing us sweeps, upsets, reverse-sweeps, and dominating performances by a wide variety of teams.
Let's talk about our favourite series for the playoffs bracket, as well as shed some light on who we think were the surprise performers. We will also be looking over which team left us disappointed and wanting more.
Favourite series - Team SoloMid vs Cloud9
Click to enlargeAlthough this was a strong one-sided performance by Team SoloMid, we appreciate this new style that they brought to the table. This unique style of a full damage and ranged composition with Lucian in the top lane got them two wins in games one and three — to later top it off with a signature Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg Zilean pick in game four to win the series.
Team SoloMid finally broke their two-year streak of not making it to the World Championships with this as well, giving us all the more reason to pick this as our favourite series. Couple that with the history that Cloud9 and Team SoloMid have as organisations and as rivals.
Apart from the three games that Team SoloMid won, we got to see one final glimpse of the Cloud9 of old, of what Cloud9 was and could have continued to be. This was a bittersweet farewell, in a sense, to the roster that made LCS history only dropping one game in the regular season, and one during their dominant Spring Split playoff run.
Surprise performers - Golden Guardians
Click to enlargeIf you were to look at the playoff bracket from top to bottom or from start to finish, it should be of no shock that our surprise performers were Golden Guardians. Golden Guardians were going into the playoffs as the fifth seed showcasing an even 9-9 record. Although ending the season with two losses in a row, they showed that there was something to build off of with their surprise win over Cloud9 prior to that. This team was slowly starting to come into its own.
Come playoffs, they let all of that out once they faced the eventual LCS champions in Team SoloMid. They 3-0d them, sweeping the rug from right under their feet. This came out of left field, as although Team SoloMid were right above them in the fourth seed, they were still one game away from netting themselves the second playoff bye. When the playoffs began, Team SoloMid were one of the teams to beat alongside the #1 seed in Team Liquid and the #2 seed in Cloud9 — who beat them in a tiebreaker for the last playoff bye.
Once they moved on to the second round of the playoffs that was a different story. Team Liquid mopped the floor with them - Golden Guardians didn’t go down without a fight though. Kevin “Hauntzer” Yarnell was the first to showcase the Lillia top in the region and to be honest, it was pretty good until it wasn’t. In their final upper bracket playoff game, they pulled out all the stops going all-in with aggressive picks bringing in the Lucian mid. Even though they picked up steam, it wasn’t enough.
Fast-forward to their final series of the playoffs, they get a rematch versus Team SoloMid. At first it looked like a repeat of the first time they met, but unfortunately for Golden Guardians, that was not the case, they got reverse swept. Even with the heartbreaking loss for this team, this roster should be excited about the future. The bottom lane of Ian “FBI” Huang and former mid-laner Choi “huhi” Jae-hyun is the consensus best bottom lane in the league. Both of their solo laners have much room to grow, alongside the team as a whole.
Disappointment team - Cloud9
Click to enlargeAlongside our Golden Guardians pick as surprise performers, Cloud9 as our disappointment team should also be of no shock. Let's say we forget that Cloud9 had a historic LCS run last split, they still started out the Summer Split 9-0 and finished in second place after defeating Team SoloMid in the only tiebreaker match of the regular season. They were poised to meet Team Liquid in the finals, or so many thought.
Cloud9 started off their winner's bracket playoffs run with a rematch against the team they dominated in the finals of the Spring Split and the eventual Summer Split finals runners up in FlyQuest. They poured everything into the Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen Ezreal cup, giving him a Yuumi to back it up, but that wasn't enough. FlyQuest outplayed them from top to bottom, and Lucas "Santorin" Larsen's early game coupled with Colin "Solo" Earnest's Shen were just too much for them.
They went into their lower bracket playoff run and made quick, but dirty work of Evil Geniuses who were also sent to the lower bracket by FlyQuest, after nearly reverse sweeping them. Evil Geniuses were a decently strong middle of the pack team, but they shouldn't have given Cloud9 as much trouble as they did. Let's face it, Cloud9 did not showcase pretty nor good games. They barely scraped by with a back-and-forth game one, a better performing, yet still dirty game two, and a messy bloodbath of a game three.
Once the final series versus Team SoloMid began, you could see that Cloud9 didn't stand a chance. Like we mentioned above, Team SoloMid cleaned house with them, and all Cloud9 had to show was just a faint glimpse of the potential this team has. This team failed to overcome their troubles of failing to adapt, and they failed to put the pieces together in the end, even after having such a monstrous start to the 2020 LCS Season.
Images via lolesports
