MAD Lions eliminated Fnatic from the 2023 LEC Spring Split after a hard-fought series that led League of Legends fans on a rollercoaster of emotions. After three games and more than one quadrakill, it was MAD Lions who kept their hopes to advance to the playoffs stage of the competition alive. They are now one step closer to collecting their tickets for the Mid Season Invitational while Fnatic will have to wait for the Summer Split before stepping onto the LEC stage again.
After MAD Lions dominated the first game from the early stage and Fnatic tied the score with a win in the second one, it all came down to one teamfight in the third and final game. As Rekkles told Dot Esports, the series was “quite bloody” due to the mistakes made by both sides, but in Elyoya’s eyes the games were “controlled” for MAD Lions’ part—and the gold graph for the first game shows it.
At 23 minutes into the game, MAD Lions were ahead by 5,000 gold after taking down the Baron with confidence as Fnatic’s jungler Razork had just been taken down. The pressure they applied to all lanes made Fnatic retreat and play passively to MAD Lions’ constant engages. Ultimately, Hylissang found the right angle to strike and bring the first game to his team.
Fnatic kept their composure entering the second tilt, and continued doing so throughout the game as the two teams fought head-on in each teamfight. Elyoya’s ganks had been a crucial factor for MAD Lions’ success, but one dive under a tier two turret in bot lane turned the the game in favor of Fnatic thanks to Rekkles’ intervention. “That was completely [a] circus play,” said Elyoya after the match while thinking back at the reasons why Fnatic took the second game of the series.
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After that, Fnatic caught MAD Lions’ jungler once more around the Baron pit, and with Elyoya gone, Rekkles and his teammates took down the neutral objective and moved to pressure all lanes with the acquired buff. One push into the opponent’s base was all it took to end the second game.
It was do-or-die for the last game of the series, and after a back and forth game it all came down to the last two teamfights. MAD Lions had controlled the Rift with vision control and by taking down neutral objectives around which fights had occurred. Nonetheless, Fnatic were resilient and fought back with proactive plays against MAD Lions’ pressure in lane.
Ultimately, MAD Lions’ strength resided in their ADC Carzzy and his late-game Jinx, who, protected by the whole team, obliterated Fnatic during what was the last fight of the series. After the match, Rekkles told Dot that Jinx had “too much control” in the last game, and thought that maybe if he had gone with a different AD carry he could have stopped her. “I thought Sivir worked pretty well in the first game, and it would have worked pretty well in this one as well, outside of the Jinx matchup,” said Fnatic’s bot laner.
Despite the result, Rekkles’ Sivir gifted his team with a quadrakill and a perfect opportunity to take down MAD Lions’ nexus. Unfortunatel,y the respawn timers of Mad Lions’ players aligned with Fnatic’s attempt to close the game, resulting in a comeback from Elyoya’s team. “I’ll have to review game three because I’m not sure what happened,” shared Elyoya when asked about the last few minutes of the match. “I feel like we misplayed many, many fights. I think we were getting caught in a lot of fights. Like Razork was reaching our back line really easily and then we just didn’t have follow up on the front line.”
As Rekkles underlined after the match, the last game could have been taken by either team: “I think we might as well have won this honestly, with a few different things. Maybe if the early game went better game three, I think our comp was pretty good.”
But in the end, it was MAD Lions who advanced to the next match, which will see them face Astralis next week for a spot in the LEC Spring Split Playoffs.
