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For the LCS’ third seed Evil Geniuses, advancing to the group stage of the 2022 League of Legends World Championship is going to require them to move at a steady pace, one step at a time.
A brutal beatdown from Fnatic was not enough to deter EG from running through the play-in stage without a victory. After nearly 40 minutes of alternating leads, EG brought their record to 1-1 today at the expense of the CBLoL representatives LOUD—after delaying the start of the game due to a footwear choice by Jojopyun.
But even with this loss, the hype behind the CBLoL representatives LOUD cannot be contained. For the second day in a row, the Mexico City crowd erupted in cheers for the Brazilian team, with an even larger following supporting them loudly on social media.
Like in their previous win against DetonatioN FocusMe, LOUD’s early-game pressure through their jungler, Croc, forced EG to respond accordingly or be the victims of a snowballed lead. But to advance to groups, the team needs to coordinate their teamfighting more efficiently, particularly in regard to what opponent the team engages on first.
“LOUD is the best team we have scrimmed so far at Worlds”
Cloud9’s top laner Fudge, representing the LCS’ first seed, has been rather blunt in his opinion of LOUD: the Brazilian team is one of the best that they’ve had the chance to scrim against. While it’s not clear exactly how dominant LOUD have been in scrims, their strong initiation and willingness to fight have made them a team that’s hard to easily defeat in just the first two days of Worlds.
In their first taste of the LCS outside of scrims, LOUD sought to make an impression on EG through the movement of their jungler, Croc. Within 15 minutes, almost every lane for LOUD had accumulated a sizable lead for themselves, providing them with the items they needed to turn multiple losing teamfights into winning ones.
Yet the tankiness of multiple members of EG proved to be too much for LOUD to burst down efficiently. Having to waste a multitude of important resources on Inspired and Impact, only for them to walk away with slivers of health, allowed the LCS representatives to secure picks and objectives for themselves.
While LOUD’s mid laner Tinowns and top laner Robo fought in the bot lane to remove EG’s carries from the immediate future, the rest of the Brazilian team were focusing on the Baron. This served as the start of the downfall for LOUD as even the tankiest members of the team fell to swift movements from Kaori’s Kalista and Jojopyun’s Akali.
Though the Brazilian team had forced EG’s hand in the early game, their deficit was too extreme to come back from. Even with a 1-2 record, LOUD are not yet out, and they’re not likely to go down willingly.
The EG bot lane steps back up
Kaori and Vulcan struggled to showcase their potential during their match yesterday against Fnatic. Despite the large amount of poke the Caitlyn and Lux combination afforded the EG bot lane, the removal of an option for engage rendered their laning phase futile and made them non-factors in the game’s outcome.
Today, however, Vulcan returned to the engage champions that brought him to the LCS’ first All-Pro team, which, just like those champs had done in the LCS Championship lower bracket finals, allowed Kaori to play without fear. The Academy ADC brought out Kalista for the first time, forcing the LOUD bot lane and beyond to succumb to the Spear of Vengeance while notable crowd control from Vulcan and Inspired kept him safe.
Kaori stepped in and out of fights with Kalista’s passive, melting the backline carries of LOUD while shredding epic objectives. The EG bot lane shared a combined 8/5/23 KDA as the enemy Nexus exploded, the camera then fixating on Kaori’s relieved look after standing out in his second Worlds match.
Compared to yesterday, Kaori and Vulcan appeared much more comfortable together throughout this game, communicating with Inspired to ensure the bot lane an early lead—and all the gold into the hands of Kaori. EG’s day isn’t over yet, though. They’ll face Beyond Gaming later in the evening, who started their Worlds run with a victory over LOUD.
