The first semi final series at the 2022 League of Legends Mid Season Invitational is set to start between Royal Never Give Up and Evil Geniuses. This is a match that RNG chose to play thanks to coming first in the rumble stage group.
This series sets the stage for a possible upset if Evil Geniuses end up somehow defeating RNG in this matchup. However, the chances of that happening is quite low as seen by previous resultsRNG’s overall performance has been extremely good. However what is most concerning is that RNG is excellent at committing and playing against teamfight heavy style, which is currently the only game play style shown by Evil Geniuses.
While the stats by itself paints a certain scenario, it is important to remember that a best of five series is definitely unpredictable and should not be approached like that. Even in the past, Evil Geniuses performed best when the playoffs started, as the team was able to showcase its true skill in the League of Legends Championship Series of Northamerica.
Evil Geniuses has had an average tournament so far, the team struggled to pick up matches against specially G2 Esports during the group stages, but secured easy wins against weaker opponents aka the minor regions. However it’s important to clarify that when playing against some minor region teams, they did struggle when trying to find a proper way to close games.
The team’s strongest performance was against another tournament favorite in T1, where the LCS champions ended up defeating and completing the upset. However, even amongst all this, most likely the best situation for Evil Geniuses is how they were able to adapt and learn from their mistakes on previous games.
Evil Geniuses did not start strong at all, but with every loss, drafting and gameplay improved step by step until they were able to show consistency in game. It seems as if this team is scaling consistently, which is important to highlight and might come in handy during the semi finals series as it is a best of five.
Nevertheless, RNG has been the team that everyone expected , an extremely pressure heavy team where all lanes are pulling strings in order to win the game. The hard part of facing RNG is that no lanes are weak by any means, as even the younger players such as Wei and Gala have enough experience already while most importantly maturing and becoming more patient within their play.
Until this point, RNG has only lost two games in the entire tournament, which is definitely something scary to face. Gala and Xiaohu have been in incredible form and are the key players for RNG at the MSI tournament so far.
As for predictions, despite all the improvements shown by the northamerican representatives, Evil Geniuses may still fall short as RNG is simply way too strong right now. On paper, RNG should easily win this series.
Evil Geniuses versus RNG will be streamed live on the official Riot Games and LoL Esports channels on May 27 2022, at 1:00 AM PDT. Hopefully it will be an exciting series to watch.
