The 2022 LCS Spring champions are looking to repeat the same in 2023.
Since re-joining the LCS back in 2020, Evil Geniuses have been a team that was pushing to win titles but fell short in playoffs every time. At least that was true until last year’s Spring Split, where the Geniuses accomplished one of the most amazing Lower Bracket runs in the North American League of Legends. This success was due to them combining two great imports, Jeong “Impact” Eon-young and Kacper “Inspired” Słoma, with two of the most prominent prodigies in the recent LCS years, Joseph Joon “jojopyun” Pyun and Kyle “Danny” Sakamaki.
And after an even better start to the Summer, it seemed like we would be entering an era of Evil Geniuses’ dominance. Unfortunately for them, the personal problems of their bot laner Danny during the playoffs meant the team couldn’t play to their usual strengths and led to them failing to repeat their championship run. This was followed by a not-so-great showing at Worlds 2022, a 1-5 Group Stage exit. But it seems that the organization is ready to get back to the throne. During the offseason, the organization had announced that Impact and Danny wouldn’t be with them in 2023, and today their starting LCS roster is made official.
- Top laner: Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho
- Jungler: Kacper “Inspired” Słoma
- Mid laner: Joseph Joon “jojopyun” Pyun
- Bot laner: Ian Victor “FBI” Huang
- Support: Philippe “Vulcan” Laflamme
Clearing space for all the #LCS POTW awards we’re about to get.@Ssumday@Inspiredlol@jojopyunlol@VictorHuang@VulcanLoL@HPE | #EGWIN pic.twitter.com/k1jVxIrm8e
— Evil Geniuses (@EvilGeniuses) December 5, 2022
The organization also replaced their last year’s coaching staff, with Peter Dun leaving for Team Heretics in LEC and the head coach Han “Rigby” Earl leaving due to his mandatory service in Korea. Evil Geniuses signed Kelsey Moser as Peter Dun’s replacement, who spent the last year as the Academy Broadcast Producer, but before that, she was 100T’s head coach and Academy Director. Moser is credited with helping to create 100T’s robust Academy and Amateur teams and with scouting many of the prospects that rose to LCS from that pipeline. They are also bringing in Aleš “Freeze” Kněžínek to become their head coach, who was an assistant coach on 100T for the last two years.
For more LCS news, follow us on ESTNN.
