The LCO Split 2 Super Week rolls to its natural conclusion today, after a fun-filled day two of long (REALLY long) fights and some all-round happy, happy gameplay.
Mammoth began yesterday’s festivities toppling Peace in a match that had begun to swing towards them long before anyone seemed to realize.
A fight near bottom inhibitor was surprisingly even despite the edge Peace were pushing with, and as James “Voice” Craig and Michael “mikru” Kim continued to scale, their level of play continued to rise and Peace just couldn’t match it.
Order and The Chiefs comfortably handled Penanet.GG and Gravitas, respectively.
Order’s final result belied a close first 10-15 minutes, as PGG’s solo laners made up for the struggles of Choi “BalKhan” Hyun-jin. But as Ronald “Kisee” Vo accelerated beyond control, PGG struggled to keep up and after he walked out of bot river skirmish 7-0-2, there was really no way for PGG’s comp to overcome.
The Chiefs had a near flawless game for their part; against the hapless Gravitas, you wouldn’t expect any different. They caught a bit of flak for the two attempts to close the game, of which they botched about one and a half of, but I don’t put much into that moving forward.
To close out the night, the resurgent Kanga Esports offed the Dire Wolves on the back of an inspired Senna/Cho’Gath pick. Kanga took the lead after about ten minutes and to put it politely they took no shortcuts en-route to finally toppling the Nexus.
Kanga will be putting a real scare into Peace who continue to tumble down the standings, and their match tonight against Gravitas will be looking like a tasty chance to draw closer as Peace have their own tough match against Order to contend with.
Mammoth and Dire Wolves will each look to close their 1-1 super week with a win, but only one will succeed as they face each other.
We look to the first match of the day as the one with the most promise, however. The all-conquering Chiefs Esports Club will enter as favourites to end Week 5 at 11-0 as they face the team judged to be the second best in the comp by Quin “Raes” Korebrits in an interview yesterday — Pentanet.GG.
Perry’s Pick of the Week – Chiefs (Honestly look like they’re jogging through the field right now) vs Pentanet (Look like they’ve set the treadmill to maximum resistance and incline as a flex, but still sometimes fall off)
I’m inclined to agree with Raes here. Pentanet.GG are looking like the only team that has the capacity to challenge The Chiefs in this form, despite not looking like that in either of yesterday’s game or the previous meeting of these two teams.
Top-to-bottom, The Chiefs players are performing better than PGG’s. So on-paper this should be a comfortable win. Where I see PGG finding an avenue to victory is in empowering their side-lanes.
When Jake “Rogue” Sharwood and Mark “Praedyth” Lewis are given freedom to influence team-fights, and PGG can get Kim “Winterer” Dong-geun onto a dynamic champion that can deal real damage, they look like a different beast. I don’t like Winterer as much when he’s shackled on a champion with narrow focus.
In short, I don’t want to see any Sejuani, Senna, or especially Tahm Kench from PGG. If they can free up their side lanes, and get a better showing from BalKhan, then they stand a chance against The Chiefs.
The Chiefs have handled their business about as professionally as you could ask for this split. Starting with Raes and new pickup Ryan “Aladoric” Richardson they are getting MVP-calibre performances across the map, and their Korean imports are performing to a much higher standard through the first half of the season than we’ve seen from PGG’s imports.
All they need to do to win is maintain the status quo – “keep on, keepin’ on”.
It’s for this reason that it’s hard to go past The Chiefs. They have the ultimate say over who wins this game – if they play as they can, then they’re a nigh-unbackable favourite. If they don’t, the door is open for PGG to steal one from them.
And PGG are definitely capable of stealing this one from them.
They won’t, though.
Perry’s Week 5 Day 3 Predictions
Chiefs def. Penatnet.GG
Kanga def. Gravitas
Order def. Peace
Dire Wolves def. Mammoth
The LCO Super Week for Split 2 concludes tonight, with our match of the week set to kick off at around 6pm AEST. Catch up on all the split details in our ultimate coverage hub.
Follow our prediction team @CDMLoL, @ImHarryTaylor and @Ties_AU on Twitter.
