This week marked the fifth week of the META High School League for 2020. For some teams, it was a chance to continue their undefeated streaks, while others were satisfied getting another win against their name.
For Nazareth Catholic College, this was their time to prove why they’re at the top of the rankings for the South Australia and Northern Territory division. They took on the Northern Adelaide Senior College, and in a 35 minute game, emerged victorious. Lushy, the Nazareth Catholic College (Team A) captain, shared his thoughts leading up to their game this week.
The pressure of continuing their undefeated streak “came to be quite nerve-wracking,” he admitted. Lushy mentioned that they knew that this game would be “more challenging” than most of their other games. Discussing their attempt at scouting their opponents, they “had trouble finding information on their champion pools”, but their main focus was “a strong positive mindset and communication”.
The victory was not an easy feat for the Nazareth team. The start of the game was messy, and at the four minute mark, Nazareth gave first blood to the enemy Rakan. After jungler intervention from both teams, all members of the bot lane fell down, giving both teams 2 kills each.
Krimz0n, the jungler for NCC, was providing a lot of support to the bottom lane with the Nunu pick. With a smart rotation down to the bottom side of the map, they enabled NCC to punish the Xayah-Rakan push from NASC. This netted Nazareth another kill, and bought his bounty up to 300 gold. The NASC jungler saw an opportunity to capitalise on the bounty, and also rotated down to clean up a shutdown kill on the Nunu, pocketing the extra 300g.
NASC capitalised on this victory with smart rotations and a Shen ultimate to even up the score at the 14 minute mark. Attempting to survive the mid game was NCCs goal after NASC stole the Rift Herald from the clutches of death. After NCC lost a teamfight around the dragon pit, NASC used the opportunity to take over the game and dropped the Herald in mid, taking the tier two tower. Things looked dire for NCC.
As the game progressed, Vladimir did what Vladimir does best, and scaled. Taking back the game from the clutches of NASC, they took the Baron and brute forced their way down the mid lane, taking the inner and outer mid lane turrets. From there, it was a back and forth game with the Shen pick on the NASC side coming in strong and keeping them in the game with many well placed Spirit’s Refuges, denying a lot of damage from the NCC side.
This game was a test of the team’s mental fortitude, and their ability to look at defeat and continue trying to get the victory. Lushy spoke on their ‘scary’ opponents, and in playing out the game, the thought of them losing. However, as a team, they kept up positive communications as they knew that “[their] late game team comp was stronger than NASC’s.”
It was this scaling,and the strong teamfighting capabilities of Yuumi and Vladimir, that secured NCC the second Baron. They used it to claim two inhibitors, and NASC were unable to stop the slow rolling victory of NCC.
The second baron fight was crucial in securing the win. For NCC, Lushy reviewed that critical moment. The gold graph shows this clearly. The champion kills and baron allowed Vladimir and Ezreal to “hit a big power spike in the game, and turned into two massive threats for the other team.”
NCCs game prep involved many practice games and meetings. Practice games – according to Lushy – are “vital in improving our communication.” In their meetings, they discuss team comps they want to run against their opponents and also find bans that may cause a threat in their matches. They’ve found practice games to be of particular help, as it improves their in-game mentality to help them get the win, and maintain their undefeated streak.
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SA/NT Standings
