Evil Geniuses punished Team Liquid’s inability to execute the very specific win condition they created for themselves in a drawn-out, but relatively mistake-free win in the 2020 League of Legends Spring Split today.
Liquid jungler Mads “Broxah” Brock-Pedersen picked up his first kill in the LCS as Elise but was otherwise unable to get back into game and create pressure. On the other side of the jungle, EG’s Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen’s picked Sejuani, and the much-better scaling on the champion allowed his team to win the match.
The Sejuani pick complimented a very beefy set of tanks in Ornn and Braum for EG. When combined with two mechanically-sound players in Bae “Bang” Jun-sik and Daniele “Jiizuke” di Mauro on mobile champions like Ezreal and Zoe, respectively, it was just up to EG to execute that siege composition, which they did to perfection. Bang free-fired damage all game from the backline and Jiizuke Portal Jumped to his heart’s content to make the match difficult for Liquid. There were simply no gaps in EG’s armor for Liquid to punish.
“We got pretty much what we wanted [in draft], and the game was pretty easy because of it,” top laner Colin “Kumo” Zhao told Dot Esports.
Doublelift had a solid game on Ashe, and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in did what he could to protect him on Tahm Kench. But it was clear from around the 15-minute mark that his team’s composition wouldn’t be able to go toe-to-toe against EG. EG’s tanks simply lived through too much of Doublelift’s damage and laid down too much crowd control on champion after champion, grinding their way through the late-game, five-on-five teamfights en route to their victory.
“Around 20-25 minutes, the game had slowed down a lot, so maybe we could have pressured harder and broken open the game, but we played on the safer end and took what was necessary,” said Kumo.
Evil Geniuses can climb out of the cellar and to a 5-5 record on the split when they take on TSM on Monday Night League, while Team Liquid look to bounce back against Dignitas tomorrow.