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NA LCS 2018 Spring Split Finals: How some guy named Steve bought an LCS title

By Tanner Kinney It’s been two weeks since the last article, mostly because I unintentionally skipped over the semi-finals matches. So, let me just sum them up here: Echo Fox are memes and Clutch Gaming don’t know how to play around Baron. The two teams that moved onto the final match were Team Liquid and 100 Thieves. For 100 Thieves, it was their freshman split, and they were already fighting for the title. For Team Liquid, they were fighting for their first title victory in their entire history in the LCS, which is as long and storied as TSM and CLG. Former teammates were battling each other for a shot at the LCS banner and Spring Split trophy. It was truly a highly anticipated match-up. So, of course, it was over in three games. The entirety of game five between Clutch and 100 Thieves almost lasted as long as the whole series. Life is full of disappointments. Massive, terrible disappointments. Like Clutch Gaming, and the ADC meta, and Zven and Mithy’s botlane duo. So how did this final shake out, and who secured the coveted third place award of almost greatness? Let’s go over the games.

Echo Fox and Clutch Gaming both return to form

The match between Clutch and Echo Fox was, admittedly, probably going to be a loss for Clutch. Clutch had failed to beat Echo Fox during the regular split and, despite impressive games against TSM and 100 Thieves, still had their record of losing every single scrim against every single team. Echo Fox may had gone mental, but were still the second place team during the regular split. Team Liquid handled them soundly, sure, but that doesn’t make them any worse of a team. If anything, it makes Team Liquid a better team. Yet every time you don’t have faith in Clutch, they pull out some crazy wins. So, for some reason, I had faith in Clutch to win. And then they got smashed in three quick games. Surprise! Admittedly, I didn’t watch much of this series, as I was dealing with other things. Yes yes, I’m the fraud analyst, I get it, please no flame. Anyways, the bits and pieces I did see showed a very poor picture for Clutch Gaming. The whole team got horribly outclassed, but particularly the jungler Lira just got completely outpathed and dumpstered by Dardoch. Even with the numerous bugs and Chronobreaks, Clutch could not find a timeline where they won this series. Echo Fox, on the other hand, re-entered the timeline where they were actually winning games. Some fans wondered where this Echo Fox was during the end of the split. Others wondered different questions:

 Image from Reddit

Let’s Go Liquid (Earned by Steve)


Reddit

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