After a regular season that ended as expected, LCS 2022 Spring is advancing with the playoffs phase. Six teams are fighting for the MSI 2022 ticket in Busan, and the first two series were amazing to watch. Last year’s champions 100 Thieves are back, and Lock In finalists Evil Geniuses proved that they are no easy prey for anyone.
100 Thieves did have an improving form towards the end of the regular season, but Cloud9 missed the chance of facing EG instead of 100 in the last week, which cost them the winners bracket. Team Liquid showed up strong, but Evil Geniuses made sure to make them feel the hell before moving on to the losers bracket to face FlyQuest.
| Also Read | LCS 2022 Spring Playoffs are starting |
Winner Bracket: Round 1
The journey of LCS 2022 Spring Playoffs started with the matches between the four best teams of the regular season. On Saturday, second place Cloud9 fought third place 100 Thieves to have a head start in the playoffs.
However, it went very poorly for the C9 side, which had a great season considering their expectations from a newly-built roster. Even from the first game, 100 Thieves showed up dominant against C9, they are quite the playoffs monsters. Cloud9’s fresh new Korean superstar import Summit ended up 0-7-0 against 100’s jungler Closer, as their top laner Ssumday was 0-0-6 in the end.
100 Thieves’ plan of making Summit fall behind and finishing the game worked quite well the second time as well. Summit played yet another Renekton and ended up 1-6-1 without being able to offer his team anything, and in a game that could be close, C9 had to basically play 4v5. Abbedagge’s Viktor played against virtually no threat, and managed to carry it with a 7-1-5 performance.
Berserker got his hands on Zeri a third time in the third game, but failed to offer his team a victory this time as well, although no one could blame him really. However, FBI was a monster on Lucian with huhi on Nami which helped him get to 12-1-6. Closer once again showed up big with his Lee Sin, and instead of crushing Summit, they dismantled C9’s bot lane to win the game this time with a strong Lucian - Nami duo.
Following that, we moved on to the second game of the week, the game that we all thought would be the stomp of the week instead of 100 vs C9: Team Liquid vs Evil Geniuses. And in the first game, it looked like TL really was planning on finishing this fast and moving on. A fed Viego, combined with Bjergsen’s Ahri, a Jinx - Tahm Kench bot lane on the hands of the best bot lane in the LCS and a 1-0-9 Ornn in the top lane, just to be safe, was the key to getting the victory for Team Liquid.
However, Evil Geniuses were able to bounce back. Meddling with CoreJJ’s plans and getting your Miss Fortune ahead seems to work great against TL. Bjergsen led his team to an easy 28 minute long victory in the following game with his 10-2-4 Ahri, the champion that’s on fire in every region in the world.
The series was tied a second time by Evil Geniuses, after Danny managed to play a whopping 16-1-8 Ezreal, jojopyun’s 7-1-0 Lucian and Inspired’s 3-1-15 Graves definitely helped him and on top lane, the old titan Impact was able to stop Bwipo’s Gangplank with a Ryze from his pocket. However, even without Bjergsen on Zilean in the fifth game, TL was able to take the series after getting Jinx - Tahm Kench and Viego a second time.
LCS 2022 Spring Playoffs next round
As you may have noticed, the playoffs are going to be held in front of an audience present this season, you might want to take that into account before watching the games. Check out the schedule for the weekend below:
Saturday, April 9
Cloud9 (1.22) vs Golden Guardians (3.80) - 22:30 CEST
Sunday, April 10
Evil Geniuses (1.26) vs FlyQuest (3.50) - 22:30 CEST
The difference between Cloud9 and Golden Guardians is reflected on the betting odds, however, after getting a 3-0 defeat from 100 Thieves last week, they might have a hard time trying to fix their mistakes and their morale for this one. A week should be more than enough, but they are a young team and GG might use it to their advantage.
Evil Geniuses and FlyQuest on the other hand are very different when you look at their rosters but when it comes to performance, we couldn’t see those differences in the regular season. However, stealing two games from Team Liquid means that EG was able to make use of such a skilled roster, when it comes to playoffs. One of the wildcards here in LCS 2022 Spring Playoffs, FLY will definitely have a hard time, but when it’s used correctly, two weeks of break might help their chances of taking down such a strong team.
If you are interested in LCS, you can find the matches, watch them and place your bets on your favourite team on Luckbox.
