TSM Recover From Their Shaky LCS Start With A Perfect Week 2 Performance
Team SoloMid (TSM) is one of the most successful franchises in the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) and the defending champions for the last LCS 2020 as well. The squad's expectations were high, but they weren't considered the straight-up favourite, with Cloud9 coming into contention. During Worlds 2020, they failed miserably and got eliminated in the group stages.
Despite being the North American scene's first seed, they couldn't even cross the group stage, which demanded substantial changes into the squad moving into the LCS spring split 2021.
One of the biggest NA mid laners for TSM, Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg, retired from the professional esports scene and joined his former team to become its Head Coach. It was a significant boost to the team, and the void left by the player was filled by Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage, who has performed valiantly through the matches till now. Moreover, they acquired Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon's services into the top lane, followed by the current Worlds finalist from Suning Gaming, Hu "SwordArt" Shuo-Chieh strengthening the bottom lane.
After all of these changes to its roster, the team grabbed many eyeballs, moving into the LCS Lock In tournament where they had an average outing in front of the teams, and Cloud9 kicked them out of the show.
Moving into the LCS Spring Split, the team had a disastrous start by losing to Flyquest, one of the lowest-rated league teams. They had reasonable objective control over the match, but the opponents out-scaled them, and they couldn't come back into the game after the mid-game. The next game against Cloud9 was no good either, as the opponents dominated the TSM squad and hardly gave them any chances to jump back into the match. In the last match of the week, they secured a game against CLG to end their losing streak.
In the LCS week 2, the team's fortunes took a sharp turn as they ended the week with a perfect 3-0 to recover from their losses in the last week and look for top-tier contention in the upcoming matches.
TSM VS GG WEEK 2 LCS SPRING SPLIT
TSM had a very bad start to this match, by dropping frequent dragons and losing four members of their squad in the very first team fight of the match. It seemed like a lost cause as Golden Guardians had late-game scaling champions like Azir into the squad, and it was only going to become more challenging for TSM to bounce back from this early game deficit. They kept their calm and looked to stop the opponents' objective control and gain small picks with numbers advantage to even out the gold difference.
Moreover, once TSM completed their mythic and core items, they took favourable fights against GG and defeated them to finally crack the enemy Nexus.
TSM VS TL WEEK 2 LCS SPRING SPLIT
TSM had the most challenging match of this week against Team Liquid. Team Liquid convincingly won the LCS Lock In finals against Cloud9, and they were the team to beat. After the early game skirmishes, where both the teams exchanged their kills, the bottom lane was the place for the next team fight, where PowerOfEvil's Azir gained a Quadra kill and swept TL off the floor.
Slowly TSM gained advantages across the map while Team Liquid tried to salvage a few kills before the showdown near the Nexus sealed the fate for the TSM squad. Like the jungler and AD, critical members carried sufficiently performed their roles and pulled off a great victory.
TSM VS IMT WEEK 2 LCS SPRING SPLIT
After two successive wins in the week, TSM were more confident in their plays which was made quite evident by picking enemies off without trading in the match. TSM created opportunities to secure early kills for the AD Carry Kai Sa, and TSM SwordArt roamed all game to push all the lanes into the enemy and make it difficult for them to come back into the match. When Immortals tried to get some kills, they were punished heavily by the TSM squad, and the squad ended the week on a strong note.
Week 1 was really a wake-up call. For both players and staff, I think there were a lot of things that we were not doing well. There were a lot of things in week 1 that we had practiced successfully, but as soon as we got on stage. I don't want to say we were afraid, but we didn't go into the Spring Split executing the same strategies.
-TSM Head Coach Bjergsen explained the cause for the turnaround of his team.
TSM have undoubtedly improved compared to their last matches, and they showcased a great understanding of the current meta. Stepping into LCS Spring Split Week 3, TSM will have its real test against the likes of Evil Geniuses, 100 Thieves, and Dignitas.
Images via Riot Games | LCS
