GIANTS Gaming have a penchant for upsetting the top teams in the EU LCS. Over the last couple of seasons, their favorite target has been G2. But today, they spread the love by beating league-leading Misfits and taking a step closer to a potential playoff spot.
GIANTS desperately needed the victory, too. At 3-9 heading into the week, they basically had to be perfect the rest of the way just to get into a tiebreaker for the last playoff seed. We wrote in our latest EU LCS power rankings that they simply could not afford more losses.
Misfits on the other hand were sitting pretty at the top of the table. They had, for the most part, been able to leverage their early game map control to snowball the side lanes effectively. That did not happen against GIANTS.
GIANTS jungler Charly “Djoko” Guillard had control of his counterpart, Nubar “Maxlore” Sarafian, from nearly the very first minutes of the game. Djoko was constantly in the Misfits jungle, stealing camps opportunistically and keeping tabs on where Misfits were going.
Whenever Misfits did make moves, Djoko was there. He helped turn around a play in the bot lane that led to two kills for GIANTS. And with a strong scaling composition, GIANTS all of a sudden had the tools to close it out.
The rest of the game was a relatively clean affair. Misfits did try some plays with support Mihael “Mikyx” Mehle diving in on Rakan, but GIANTS simply did not afford Misfits the opportunity to find a clean fight. They stayed patient with a split push, using their Ryze to drag Misfits all over the map. It was the type of macro that earned their coach, Kublai Barlas, the title of “Late Game King.”
Now at 4-9, GIANTS are improbably still alive in the playoff race. Misfits, on the other hand, have to deal with their recent bout of tepid play. They’re at their best when they’re aggressive, starting with how they control the jungle. This marks two straight games where they never seized tempo of the game. They’ll look to bounce back tomorrow at 1pm CT vs. G2 to prove that they still belong at the top of the EU LCS.
