CLG keep themselves in the playoff race while keeping the four-way tiebreak possibility alive.
Ever since promoting their Challengers mid laner to the main roster, Cloud9 has been on a tear. They were on a seven-game win streak coming into the last day of the LCS Spring Split regular season and three members of the roster were in the MVP discussion. Considering CLG’s very inconsistent split on the other side, many expected this game to be a foregone conclusion with a C9 victory.
Even the drafting phase went pretty well for Cloud9. They got their hands on a composition pretty comfortable for them with picks like Jayce and Gragas, along with a Varus/Ashe bot lane. But once the game actually loaded onto the Rift, it was just the CLG show headlined by Contractz.
The star jungler started out the game with a top lane gank where he skirted around the Cloud9 vision masterfully, getting his team the first blood. This was just the start and the end was not in sight. After the top lane, Contractz visited the mid lane where got another kill, and then said why not also the bottom lane? And as if these all weren’t enough, he even managed to steal the first dragon under Cloud9’s noses.
That’s the Sejuani difference 😏 #LCS #CLGWIN #DefendtheFaith pic.twitter.com/wTrlyXYoO3
— CLG (@clgaming) March 17, 2023
While Cloud9 did not have too many answers to CLG’s aggression around the map, they still did a great job of hanging onto the game. CLG were still struggling to secure objectives like Baron even after picking multiple Cloud9 members, which meant the game state did not move forward too much. There were a couple of points where Cloud9 looked like they could have made a comeback, but individual mistakes were plentiful on their sides, especially from EMENES and Zven who kept getting caught by Palafox’s Taliyah.
At last, CLG was able to find the fight they were looking for after baiting around the Baron, killing the enemy jungler and securing the big buff. The first Baron siege also almost got saved by Cloud9 by a massive play from EMENES, but they were too behind at this point to make any meaningful comeback. CLG was able to just brute force through their base and end the game in the massive upset.
It just doesn’t end 😱 #LCS #CLGWIN #DefendTheFaith pic.twitter.com/JiXAKVVppV
— CLG (@clgaming) March 17, 2023
With this win, CLG managed to keep themselves in the playoff race while eliminating TSM from the postseason contention. But there are still multiple possible tiebreaker games possible, depending on the results of later games. A Cloud9 win here would’ve guaranteed them first place, but they are now in danger of a tie if FlyQuest manages to beat TSM in the next game of the day.
On the mid-table side, two teams sit at 10 wins and two teams at 9. Also depending on the last three results of the game, there is a possibility that all four of these teams (EG, CLG, 100T and GG) find themselves tied at 10-8, which would mean a four-way tie and a very long last day for the LCS.
(Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)
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