Cloud9 And EG Rally To Remain In 2021 LCS Spring Contention
The 2022 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) continued last week and although it wasn't as riveting as the first week, it still packed a punch.
Cloud9 bounced back from 100 Thieves' sweep the week prior with one of their own. The same can be said for Evil Geniuses as they were able to take a solid victory over FlyQuest after they were sent into the losers' bracket by Team Liquid.
With that in mind, here's how the second round of the LCS Spring Playoffs played out.
Cloud9's Fudge Factor Was In Full Force
Even though they suffered a devastating and surprising loss to the reigning LCS champions, 100 Thieves, Cloud9 were able to bounce back swiftly with a sweep over Golden Guardians. All they needed was the Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami factor which spearheaded them to victory with a scoreline of 26/1/23 across three games of Viktor and LeBlanc.
LCS watchers went into this series with grave doubts about Cloud9 owing to their poor form up to this point. The Thieves had seemingly cracked the Cloud9 code, putting the focus onto top laner Park "Summit" Woo-tae, forcing him into 15 deaths a week prior.
And that is why, for the Golden Guardians matchup, Cloud9 decided to change it all up, bringing in support Jonah "Isles" Rosario in place of Kim "Winsome" Dong-keon in an attempt to re-evaluate how the team would be able to continue their playoff performances, according to Head Coach Max Waldo.
It worked as intended, Cloud9 looked reinvigorated as they made sure to keep their carries ahead after noticing that Golden Guardians were going to be bottom lane centric, focusing the duo of Kim "Berserker" Min-cehol and Isles.
Evil Geniuses Cruise Through
Following their close 3-2 loss to Team Liquid in Round 1 of the playoffs, thoughts drifted to an unlikely title challenge. All they needed to do was start their losers' bracket run strong, which was what came to pass when they defeated FlyQuest, dominating them in a 3-1 victory with a great performance from their ADC, Kyle "Danny" Sakamaki who went 19/28/4 for the whole series.
They proved that their previous match wasn't a fluke as they handily took care of the boys in green with three controlled victories while they kept their only loss in game two a close debacle.
Throughout the series, Evil Geniuses drafted perfect compositions to combat FlyQuest's single-minded game plan. This was shown by the Geniuses' willingness to pick crowd control, zoning, and peel to protect their carries against FlyQuest's heavy frontline composition of Ornn and Volibear brute-forcing their way into the backlines of team fights.
With Gangplank barrels, Trundle pillars, and Tahm Kench's Devours from Evil Geniuses' side, FlyQuest couldn't get the ball rolling, as their mid-laner Loic "toucouille" Dubois and ADC Johnson "Johnsun" Nguyen were stopped from doing their duties as DPS in fights.
Now, Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses will go up against each other on April 17. The winner moves on to the losers' bracket finals to face either 100 Thieves or Team Liquid at the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas while the loser goes home.
