Calling TSM’s Summer Split a rough one would be a massive understatement. For long stretches, players looked to be on different pages, and it was painfully obvious that there was no dominant voice leading the team.
The team started the split a few steps behind everyone else in terms of their read on the meta. TSM’s inability to adapt quickly to patches has long been one of their weaknesses, and they kept playing late game compositions in an early-game meta. Their passivity was their Achilles’ Heel, and they lost many games before their champions had the chance to come online.
Today, however, none of that mattered. The team barely scraped into the postseason after getting everything together in the final two weeks of the split. The squad finally began making proactive plays and methodically choking out opponents like the TSM of old.
Coming into the final week of regular season North American LCS play, TSM were neck-and-neck with OpTic Gaming in the standings. A huge victory over OpTic yesterday, though, gave them the slight advantage they needed to pull ahead. Today’s match against Team Liquid was a must-win for TSM, however, since OpTic beat out 100 Thieves earlier in the day. Liquid were looking like the undisputed best team in the league, so the situation was dire for TSM fans.
Lucky for them, however, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg took matters into his own hands.
TSM’s star mid laner was given Akali in the draft phase and proceeded to melt Liquid, ending the game with 14 kills and only one death. Off the back of his standout performance, TSM are locked into a four-way tie for third place with 100 Thieves, Echo Fox, and FlyQuest.
The tiebreakers will be played tomorrow.
