Following a string of losses at the start of the season, SK Telecom T1 found their first undefeated week of the 2018 League of Legends Champions Korea Spring Split after an unlikely victory over KSV Esports.
In a rematch of 2017 World Championship, which took place exactly 100 days ago, both SKT and KSV sported slightly different versions of the rosters used at the Beijing National Stadium. But among these different faces, one player especially stood out—SKT jungler Park “Blossom” Beom-chan.
Blossom’s LCK debut earlier this week saw SKT win their first series since the season opener against ROX Tigers over three weeks ago. For fans of SKT, Blossom looked to be the team’s savior. But Blossom’s victory came against bbq Olivers, who, alongside SKT and MVP, were at the bottom of the standings. Blossom’s true test came today against KSV, one of the league’s top teams. And Blossom passed this test beautifully.
On engage-oriented junglers like Jarvan IV and Sejuani for the series’ two respective games, Blossom facilitated early kills for SKT. These kills became the foundation for SKT to snowball and swiftly end the match.
On the other side of the Rift, early game miscommunication seemed to plague KSV. A disjointed play between KSV’s top and bottom lane 15 minutes into game one cost them three kills, a dragon, and later the game as it started SKT’s aforementioned snowball.
A similar mistake in game two cost KSV’s Kang “Ambition” Chan-yong his life. SKT took the Baron with Ambition dead and completed their second snowball of the match. Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok’s Kassadin became an unstoppable machine who easily sliced through the entirety of KSV.
With the LCK now on break for the Lunar New Year, SKT and KSV will have a week off to reflect on this series before the league resumes play on Feb. 20.
