Gen.G 1, Kingzone 0
Gen.G picked up a crucial 2-0 win against Kingzone DragonX on Wednesday in the League of Legends Champions Korea in Seoul.
Gen.G (8-3) played well in the face of oncoming aggression. Whether it was mid laner Song "Fly" Yong-jun playing a clean Galio and taking one of the rising mid lane picks in the current meta or jungler Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong keeping the peace early on as Sejuani, Gen.G showed that it could draft well, putting itself in advantageous positions against Kingzone. Sure, Kingzone held a mechanical edge in the matchup but that didn't stop Gen.G from drafting teamfighting compositions. Going forward, if top laner Lee "CuVee" Seong-jin can stabilize his champion pool and find lane matchups he can take over, then there's not much to suggest that Gen.G won't be playing for a chance to go to the World Championships later this split.
While Gen.G can feel cautiously optimistic about its future, Kingzone DragonX (7-4) needs to take a second and figure out what it wants to do. The team clearly wanted to do something more than trade a sole kill by the 20-minute mark in Game 1, but it got thoroughly stuffed by Gen.G's macro game. In Game 2, when Kingzone drafted for presence in lane, Gen.G simply sat back and scaled into teamfights where it again sliced through Kingzone with the brutal Sejuani and Galio teamfighting core. At the end of the day, Kingzone's drafting phase was the biggest problem for this team but, at the same time, Kingzone's bottom lane going dark against one of the best duo lanes in the world won't help much.
Kingzone looks to recover by the time it takes on MVP at 4 a.m. ET on Sunday, followed by Gen.G battling a surging Afreeca Freecs at 7 a.m. ET later that day.
--Noah Waltzer
Bbq Oliver 1, Jin Air Green Wings 0
Bbq Olivers picked up its first win of the Summer Split Wednesday morning when it defeated the Jin Air Green Wings 2-1.
Coming into the series, smart money would have been on the Jin Air Green Wings (2-9) to triumph, as the side was hot off of not only defeating the Olivers (1-10) last week, but also off its startling upset of Kingzone DragonX earlier in the season. At first, it seemed that the safe prediction would end up being the correct one, as Jin Air came out of the gates blazing in Game 1 off the back of Park "Teddy"Jin-sung's Jhin. As Game 1 wound to its painstakingly slow conclusion, it became clear that the two teams were far closer in form than it might have seemed, as the Olivers not only endured Jin Air's enormous early and mid game lead, it actually nearly took the game out from under Jin Air. Only a serendipitous theft of the Elder Dragon by Park "Nova" Chan-ho's Tahm Kench saved Jin Air from an embarrassing loss in the first game, as set the stage for the turnabout that was to come.
Things didn't improve for the Green Wings as the morning wore on. Eom "Umti" Seong-hyeon quickly transformed from being a passenger in Game 1 to an outright liability for the rest of the series as the Oliver's jungler, Kim "Trick" Kang-yun, found both first and second blood in both of the subsequent games, giving the Olivers a comfortable lead to play with in both cases. While Game 2 remained close despite that, it quickly became apparent that if Jin Air weren't playing from ahead, it was the weaker team on the rift. A catastrophic teamfight at the 20-minute mark in Game 2 handed off the baron to the Olivers, and the Green Wings failed to even make it that far in Game 3, and were instead slowly choked out after a dominant early game from the Olivers, who took the series in surprisingly decisive fashion.
The bbq Olivers' next opponent will be the Afreeca Freecs, who they face at 7 a.m. ET on Friday, while the Jin Air Green Wings will look for redemption against Team MVP at 4 a.m. ET that same day.
--James Bates