In what is sure to be remembered as one of the greatest upsets in the history of the North American League of Legends Championship Series, Clutch Gaming defeated Team SoloMid 3-1 in the quarterfinals of the Spring Split playoffs on Sunday.
TSM had never missed a domestic final going into this series. That streak is over, and its end came at the hands of a team in its first year of NA LCS play.
TSM started off on the front foot, with jungler Mike "MikeYeung" Yeung quickly taking control of Game 1 on Olaf. With a bit of help from his lanes, he starved Clutch jungler Nam "LirA" Tae-yoo's Sejuani of farm early on and got TSM out to a solid lead. A TSM Baron at 21 minutes then swiftly gave way to a 30-minute win.
Clutch Gaming was quick to adapt, however. Swapping to Skarner for Game 2, LirA was far less vulnerable in the opening minutes and even found a solo kill onto MikeYeung's Olaf. He maintained perfect kill participation for much of the game and died only in the final fight. By then, TSM could no longer handle the damage of CG AD carry Apollo "Apollo" Price's Kog'Maw, particularly when paired with a massive frontline and the immaculate Death Sentences of support Nick "Hakuho" Surgent on Thresh.
With the series tied up, TSM simply fell apart in the bot lane. Hakuho's Thresh continued his streak of hooks, and with Apollo on Caitlyn into the Kog'Maw of TSM's Jesper "Zven" Svenningsen, the creep score advantage for Clutch grew continuously. Meanwhile, TSM support Alfonso "Mithy" Aguirre Rodriguez had very questionable placements of his Tahm Kench ultimates, and TSM missed out on multiple plays that further cemented its fate. Zven ended the game 0/6/1 (kills/deaths/assists) for nearly half his team's deaths and was caught out time and again as Clutch put itself at match point.
Backs to the wall, TSM went all-in on winning lanes, using Morgana to counter Thresh as well as picking up Caitlyn and Syndra. Unfortunately, the rotation in champion select couldn't fix the problems in TSM's play.
In arguably its worst early game all series long, TSM made a bold early play for first blood only to have the fight turned around for a 2-for-4 trade. It was all downhill from there, as Clutch found kill after kill and objective after objective, and TSM's early-game-centric draft had little hope of scaling to a victory.
Just 31 minutes in, Clutch Gaming took one last teamfight and drove the final nail into the coffin of Team SoloMid's perfect NA LCS finals attendance record.
Having slain the quintessential North American titans, Clutch Gaming can only go into its match against 100 Thieves at 3 p.m. ET next Sunday with the utmost confidence. For TSM, this is undoubtedly the lowest moment in the organization's long history, and it remains to be seen what it will do to right the ship for summer.