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A pair of North American powerhouses wrestled with each other today as Team Liquid contested 100 Thieves for first place in the LCS Week 5 Day 1. Both teams have displayed incredible potential in the Spring and Summer Splits thus far, creating a trail of excitement leading to their match.
Before today's LCS game, 100T led the head-to-head score 2-1 with a tight game the first time they met this year. However, in the other LCS games, the victor was always the team that ran away with the game the longer it progressed.
100 Thieves stave off Team Liquid and remain in the top spot in the LCS
This LCS game started ugly for Team Liquid as they took a steep dive downhill in gold levels around the 10-minute mark. Before then, the creep scores nearly matched each other in every lane, keeping the game relatively even.
Team Liquid's decision to start the Rift Herald with 100T's jungler nearby cost them a fortune as Closer's Veigo zoned off Armao on Lee Sin. Huhi had roamed to the mid lane by this point on Leona and closed in with Ssumday on Gwen in the top lane.
Armao turned away from Rift Herald and let it expose its critical spot to Closer, who hit the mark and took the objective with ease. After that, the 4 100T members battled Armao, Jensen, and CoreJJ as Jenkins on Gangplank ran in slightly late.
Late timing aided 100T in quickly killing Armao before turning onto the other three kills to come. With 3 100T members below half HP, Tactical entered the fight alone to try and clean up but surrendered a fifth kill without downing any opponents.
From that point on, 100T started to open the game even further by taking drake after drake and a couple of towers in the process. TL attempted to pick a 4v2 fight in the top lane with a teleport from Jenkins, but 100T caught up fast and outmatched them in kills 2-1.
Ssumday grew into a monster as the game progressed, landing multiple solo kills while diving in the bot lane. Also worth mentioning, Closer outscored Armao in vision score 38-13 in 22 minutes, explaining how 100T took so many objectives.
Huhi's build by this point strayed from the normal Leona builds thousands of players see in the LCS by selecting Zhonya's Hourglass as his first core item. As always, he had his support item and boots to pair with the stasis item.
TL finally shut down Ssumday's Gwen by a razor-thin margin when Tactical came down to help Jenkins 2v1 him. 100T's top laner almost managed to kill both challengers in the process, however.
Team Liquid found a bit of life in the LCS match after 30 minutes by catching up to 100T's kill count 7-11 after being down 2-9. They went on to snag a baron at 34 minutes, but only three members survived to carry it after the fight that proceeded.
100 Thieves took advantage of a retreating TL and raced to elder drake, taking it with ease. Afterward, they applied steep pressure on the enemy base and racked up kill after kill.
TL took their final kill of the LCS game at 42 minutes, leaving the last 6 to 100T. The leaders took their second elder drake of the game at 43 minutes before moving to a baron of their own.
Nothing fell TL's way in any sort near the end as 100T broke down the doors to their base and dove without much resistance.
In the end, 100 Thieves started strong and ended strong with a commanding performance over Team Liquid. TL takes on C9 tomorrow, another formidable opponent in the LCS, while 100T should get a break against FLY.
After analyzing the game, many LCS fans are starting to state how 100 Thieves can't finish a game properly. Today's display of dominance was nice to see, but the late game felt a bit stalled on 100T's part.
They grabbed elder and baron at a point where they arguably could have just ended the game, which hurts their image of confidence. After rolling over TL for most of the game, 100T could have ended it much sooner, and people noticed in a heartbeat.
100 Thieves need to work on some late-game mechanics if they want to compete at worlds; if they make it, that is. 100T also needs to step up their late-game if they want to remain in the top LCS slot.
Meanwhile, Tema Liquid needs to make major improvements that'll hopefully be solved when/if Alphari makes a return to the side.
