An exciting summer split in North America is slowly coming to an end. Last week the quarter-final match-ups took place and after this weekend we will know the teams heading to the grand final.
Quarter-Finals Recap
After a hectic series of tiebreakers in the final week of the regular season, the final playoff spots were locked in. Clutch Gaming managed to work their way into the picture and faced off against TSM. Meanwhile, OpTic reached their first-ever playoff stage and went head to head against Cloud9.
Neither series was overly close. Clutch Gaming pulled out a surprise for some with their 3-1 victory over TSM. Despite TSM looking shaky in the final weeks of the regular season, many thought they’d be able to overcome Clutch who just scrapped into playoffs.
The excitement of reaching playoffs was short-lived for OpTic. CLG dispatched of them relatively quickly with a 3-0 win. This will be the first and last time the OpTic brand reaches playoffs in the LCS. Following the recent buyout, they will most likely be competing under a new name next split.
Semi-Finals Preview
We are in for a team this weekend. With Cloud9 facing off against CLG and Liquid choosing to battle Clutch in the semi-finals. Cloud9 and CLG faced off in a tiebreaker two weeks ago to determine who would get a bye into the semi-finals. Until this tiebreaker, the teams were tied at a 1-1 record against each other in the summer split. Will Cloud9 now have the edge?
The resurgence CLG have made recently is quite special. The roster was down in the dumps for quite some time and have worked their way from bottom, to mid-table to now pushing for a top 2 finish in the Summer Split. I can see this series going all the way to a game 5 as the two have been tightly contested all split.
On the flip-side, we have Liquid vs Clutch and for many, the winner is already set. Most fans and analysts will have Liquid winning this series comfortably. After all, they did get to pick who they played between Clutch and CLG.
Over the past year or so there had been a bit of rivalry between the two ADCs; Doublelift and Cody Sun. This stems back to the 100 Thieves vs Liquid battles we got to see regularly last year, however, Doublelift always had the edge. With Huni becoming a dominant force again in the top lane and Cody Sun putting in MVP like performances, Liquid could have more of a struggle here than most think.
