Home Esports Reigning Champions Start Out With a Dominant Victory

Reigning Champions Start Out With a Dominant Victory

by Rohat Dicle Kılınç

The wait is over, and the LCS is finally back on with the Spring Split Opening Day.


After a nearly three months long break since the end of Worlds 2022, the North American League of Legends is back on the menu. This offseason was full of big changes with many organizations putting together ambitious rosters. Teams saw a lot of player movement, only 50 of the starting spots from the Summer of 2022 belong to the same players. On top of that many exciting new players entered the league such as Prince, VicLa, reigning World Champion jungler Pyosik and the last Spring’s MVP, Summit.

Unfortunately, there are some visa issues for the Opening Day and the remainder of Week 1, but most of these issues are expected to be resolved by the next week. For Week 1, Eyla for FlyQuest, IgNar for Dignitas and Gori for Golden Guardians won’t be starting. They are replaced by Winsome, Biofrost and Young, respectively.

C9 vs 100T

The 2023 LCS Spring Split kicked off with a rematch of the last Summer’s LCS Finals, even though 100T now has a very different roster. The fans were especially excited to see Doublelift on the stage after a two-year break from pro play, but the eyes turned to Busio after the draft with the Azir support pick from the rookie.

There wasn’t too much early action around the bot lane and the first kill of the 2023 Season came from Fudge in a solo kill. We didn’t have any more kills when the plate dropped at the 14th minute, but C9 found themselves a 1.5k gold lead thanks to the first Herald and turret. Once the 5v5 teamfights started, C9 dominated their opponents with their top side being very ahead of the pace. The game almost ended very early, but a clutch Baron steal from Closer gave 100T a second life. Unfortunately, that second life only delayed the inevitable as minions ended the game just as 100T found their first successful teamfight.

But despite the loss, Doublelift hit a very impressive milestone with his second kill in the game. The veteran ADC became the third player to reach 2.1K kills in the LCS history.

  • Teams: C9 1 – 0 100T
  • Time: 32:29
  • Kills: 25 – 8
  • Turrets: 9 – 2
  • Gold: 62.6k – 53.7k
  • Dragons: 3 – 1
  • Barons: 0 – 1

EG vs GG

GG already had an uphill battle against the Evil Geniuses, and the early bot lane dive by Inspired didn’t certainly help. GG tried to find some answers, but they were behind by over 1.5 gold before the tenth minute. Inspired’s carry Sejuani was once again out in full force in the early game as he terrorized GG all around the map while picking up almost every objective available. But a couple of overzealous moves around Drake and Baron from EG gave GG a way back. GG kept outfighting their opponents behind River and Young, going as far as taking the Baron and gold lead away from EG.

GG was doing a good job of controlling the map and picking EG members to cement their gold lead. But they also made the classic NA mistake of starting Baron and choosing a bad fight. An ace for EG meant the Baron and Cloud Soul went their way. Despite GG fighting hard, FBI took over the game at this point and gifted his new team the win.

  • Teams: EG 1 – 0 GG
  • Time: 42:56
  • Kills: 19 – 17
  • Turrets: 9 – 5
  • Gold: 80.6k – 75.4k
  • Dragons: 4 – 2
  • Barons: 1 – 1

TL vs FLY

The third game of the day put two teams with hyped-up imports against each other, with the EG support Vulcan joining the cast as a guest. The game was very slow to start, maybe not surprising with this many LCK imports on the Rift. Despite the TL draft being more early game oriented and FLY opting in for scaling, the latter had an over 1k gold lead throughout the early game and teams split the first two drakes. TL not being able to get ahead early started to hurt them during the mid-game as it got really hard for them to challenge FLY. They even gave up an uncontested Baron and let Summit split push.

Desperate to find a play to get back into the game, TL tried to dive the enemy mid laner at the top side but it backfired heavily. FLY ended up getting three kills and their second Baron of the game. With the gold lead over 10k, they were easily able to push for the end. Prince had a very dominant debut, almost getting a Pentakill to end the game.

  • Teams: TL 0 – 1 FLY
  • Time: 31:31
  • Kills: 8 – 16
  • Turrets: 3 – 10
  • Gold: 54.1k – 64.9k
  • Dragons: 1 – 3
  • Barons: 0 – 2

CLG vs DIG

The LCS audience got introduced to the newest member of the broadcast team for the 2023 season with the next game of the day, Marc “Raafaa” Arrambide who was previously a caster for NA Academy.

The game itself had a very one-sided start with CLG finding a great early bot lane dive and giving Luger two early kills. It was great to see Contractz continuing his early game aggressiveness from the Summer regular season. He found a counter gank in the top lane and another gank in the mid lane to give his team nearly 6k gold lead before 15 minutes. The game continued for about 15 more minutes as CLG made sure not to make any mistakes. They eventually closed the game out in a very clean fashion.

  • Teams: CLG 1 – 0 DIG
  • Time: 30:28
  • Kills: 10 – 6
  • Turrets: 11 – 3
  • Gold: 63.1k – 50.9k
  • Dragons: 3 – 1
  • Barons: 1 – 0

IMT vs TSM

A little bit of a change-up in the draft for the last game of the day as IMT bot lane busted out the Draven/Pyke duo. TSM tried to shut down the Draven in the early game with multiple ganks, but Tactical was still able to get an early cash-in. The game could’ve been comfortable for IMT, but a misstep at Drake and Ablazeolive getting caught a couple of times gave TSM a way back into the game as they secured themselves the Cloud Soul and a Baron. IMT tried to hold on to the game by letting Revenge split push, but TSM’s Baron siege was too powerful to resist.

  • Teams: IMT 0 – 1 TSM
  • Time: 31:28
  • Kills: 2 – 12
  • Turrets: 6 – 8
  • Gold: 53k – 56.3k
  • Dragons: 0 – 4
  • Barons: 0 – 1


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