Photo by Colin Young-Wolff via Getty Images/Riot Games
Evil Geniuses hadn’t played on the LCS stage in 14 days, and the defending champions weren’t able to shake off the rust in time during today’s 3-1 Summer Playoff loss to Cloud9. C9 rolled through the league’s top-seeded team to claim North America’s second berth at this year’s League of Legends World Championship.
Despite earning the first seed in the playoff bracket, EG was promptly dropped out of the upper bracket of the postseason by a scorching hot Cloud9 team, losing as many games today as they did throughout the entire Summer Split.
Cloud9 are confirmed as the second #LCS representative at #Worlds2022 pic.twitter.com/srXpH1ngCN
— LCS (@LCSOfficial) August 28, 2022
C9 jumped out of the gate with a statement victory in game one of today’s series, nearly going deathless in a 15-1 rout of EG. From there, they won two of the final three games of the series, giving EG little room to breathe, even in the one game that they did manage to pick up.
The fourth and final game of the series didn’t feature a first blood until the 19-minute mark of the contest, but its first teamfight showcased Berserker’s Zeri in prominent fashion. He cleaned up four kills and led the charge for Cloud9 into the scaling-heavy late-game. He’d go on to finish the series-clinching game of the match with eight kills, while finishing the series with a total scoreline of 24/8/16 (5.0 KDA). Berserker played Zeri in three of today’s four games.
Earlier this week, Cloud9 top laner Fudge predicted C9 would swiftly 3–0 EG in an interview with League content creator Travis Gafford. The bold claim was made on the basis of scrim results, saying “EG is one of the worst teams in playoffs right now. You would have to see the scrims, but like, Jesus, man.”
Only the 10 players and the four walls around them knew just how lopsided those supposed scrim results may have been, but on-stage, EG looked the most lackluster they have all season during today’s near-sweep. Contrary to Fudge’s claims, C9 mid Jensen praised EG during an on-stage post-match interview, saying “EG is the best team and the toughest opponent we had to face.”
Even though the Evil Geniuses were able to pick up a game, C9 still played well enough to prevent any late-game push by the defending champs.
Fudge in particular backed up his pre-series claims with a strong performance, posting a scoreline of 11/6/20 across the four games, while serving as a versatile anchor for C9; he bounced between carry champions in the first two games and defensive tanks in the final two.
EG’s upper bracket placement meant they originally only had to win two best-of-fives in order to advance to their second-straight LCS finals. Now, the team will have to win three series in order to push through the lower bracket and reach the grand final. They’ll begin their lower bracket run against TSM on Friday, Sept. 2.
With their win, Cloud9 has advanced to the upper bracket semifinals of the LCS Championship, where 100 Thieves await them on Saturday, Sept. 3.
Both those teams are already locked into this year’s edition of Worlds: all that matters now is where they’ll end up seeded in the premier League of Legends tournament.