Last week Unicorns of Love suffered a major blow to their playoff hopes as their jungler left the team in the thick of a competitive League Championship Series (LCS) playoff race. Nearly a week later, Unicorns has announced the man who will replace Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek—for now, at any rate.
Berk “Gilius” Demir will man the jungle as Unicorns battles SK Gaming and Gambit Gaming this week. Demir actually spent one month as a member of Unicorns in August 2014 before the team recruited Szkudlarek. Now he’ll get a chance to reprise that role in some meaningful games.
“On top of being strong player with good mechanics, Gilius knows our team very well and we trust him to give his best on the rift,” the team’s coach Fabian “Sheepy” Mallant said in a Facebook post revealing the move.
In addition to Demir, the team has added two other jungle talents with LCS experience, Korean jungler Cho “H0R0” Jae-hawn and Karim “Airwaks” Benghalia. Last split Cho competed on the ill-fated Meet Your Makers team before their relegation, and Benghalia played for Copenhagen Wolves this split before leaving the team midway through the season.
That gives the Unicorns a stable of jungle talent as they attempt to turn what’s been a disappointing season around. The team currently sits at 7-7, fifth in the standings, a poor result considering their run to the finals last split. But as last split showed, reaching the playoffs may be all a team like Unicorns needs to get rolling. Wins against Gambit and SK this week would put Unicorns in a prime position to qualify and set themselves up to earn a spot at the Riot World Championship.
