To say that this split of the NA LCS is hard to predict would be a massive understatement, and the clown train kept on rolling today. Team Liquid, who were tied for first place, fell to last-place Cloud9 today in one messy, messy game.
The good news for C9 is that they won a game—and in last place, every single win is a big deal when you’re trying to claw back into playoff contention. Not only that, but they started Academy jungler Robert “Blaber” Huang today, and he played decently. He definitely didn’t look excellent, and even in victory was on a lower level than Liquid jungler Jake “Xmithie” Puchero—but still, it wasn’t bad.
To just put it all out on the table right now, neither team really deserved to win this game. It was ugly, messy, and an all-around head-scratcher. C9 won, which is great for a last-place team, but they messed up tower dives, had poor positioning in the mid-game, and their draft of picking a Fiddlesticks and Swain into a Morgana made almost no sense.
Luckily, C9 top laner Eric “Licorice” Ritchie proved, yet again, that he at least doesn’t deserve to be on a last-place team by slinging the rest of his teammates on his back and carrying them on Poppy. Yeah, Poppy’s a weird pick, but when you play it as well as Licorice did today, who cares?
Liquid losing when they were so dramatically ahead in the bot lane was a bad look, too, even more so than C9’s own rocky performance. After winning a key fight around the Baron pit, they overstayed during a mid lane push, not respecting the damage and impact of the super-fed Licorice slowly waltzing up to them from behind. Licorice pushed them back into C9 mid Nicolaj Jensen, who helped clean them up and swing the game in their favor.
Not only that, but former world champion top laner Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong on Liquid continued to struggle. He was way too aggressive against Licorice in his top lane matchup—even after he fell way behind due to a big early tower dive.
All in all, this was a rough display for both teams. Liquid, as the most recent regional champions and supposed best team, clearly have a lot to work on—and the fact that C9 can play that poorly and still potentially claw back in the standings is not great for the region as a whole. NA clearly still has a lot to work on, and we’re past the split’s halfway point already.
C9’s next game is tomorrow at 2pm CT against OpTic Gaming.
