Afreeca Freecs continued their climb up the LCK Spring Split standings with an impressive victory over SK Telecom T1.
Unafraid of the three-time world champions SKT, Afreeca opted to begin the series with their reserve jungler Lee “Mowgli” Jae-ha, and reserve AD carry Kim “Aiming” Ha-ram. Luckily for Afreeca, this risky strategy worked out quite well.
Afreeca were able to grab Galio in game one and demolished SKT with the colossus mid laner. One smartly played teamfight by Afreeca allowed them to almost ace SKT, and take the Baron as a reward. With the Baron buff, Afreeca easily snowballed their lead. SKT jungler Park “Blossom” Beom-chan, who was on Skarner, could only impale tanks since Afreeca’s AD carry and support both bought quicksilver sashes. With Blossom unable to find any picks, SKT lost the game without a kill to their name.
Game two saw SKT get their hands on Galio. And like Afreeca did in game one, SKT made full use of the champion’s wide assortment of crowd control tools, and high damage ratios. SKT mid laner Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok had an outstanding performance on the Galio, and was the primary factor behind SKT’s teamfight victories. Game two mirrored game one, except that in this instance it was SKT who found the snowball.
Afreeca brought in their full-strength starting lineup for game three. With Galio smartly banned, Afreeca were free to stomp over SKT with standard play. SKT, without the Galio, couldn’t match Afreeca’s macro play, and gave up every non-tower map objective as a punishment. Aside from a couple of instances where their players got caught out by Blossom’s Skarner, Afreeca ended game three with few mistakes.
With their sixth week of play completed for the LCK Spring Split, Afreeca won’t return to the LCK stage until March 8, when they face ROX Tigers.
