Group Stage Day 6: SK Telecom Restores Order
Finally, a day where everything goes according to plan. With how insane the 2015 World Championships have been so far, it was actually refreshing to see a group where favorites played like favorites and rightfully won against the underdogs.
Group C ended as many expected, with Korea’s SK Telecom T1 taking first, followed by China’s Edward Gaming. While there’s not much else to say with regards to that, here are a few takeaways from this group:
Faker is Still Under Wraps
Not to discount the fact that SK Telecom topped their group without a single loss, making them the most dominant team at the tournament so far… but many expected their wins to be on the back of Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, the all-time best player in League of Legends.
Instead, Faker underperformed in their Week 1 games, allowing Jang “MaRin” Gyeong-Hwan and Bae “Bang” Jun-sik to carry. Those looking for a stronger showing for the Demon King would also be disappointed this week. After SKT made quick work of their Chinese rivals, they subbed in Lee “Easyhoon” Ji-hoon in the mid lane to allow Faker some time off.
Bang is statistically the biggest carry of the Group Stage, with a mind-boggling 71 KDA ratio!
The scariest thing to note about this is that even without Faker, SKT are a force to be reckoned with. Bae “bengi” Seong-ung is also staking his claim as a potential 2-time world champion by exerting his early pressure all around the map, most notably to the benefit of MaRin.
If Faker is just the icing on SKT’s cake, can anyone even hand them a defeat on the road to the Grand Finals?
Edward Gaming: Sandbag or Slump?
Are EDG hiding their true strength, or are they less prepared for this tournament than we thought?
There was no question that Edward Gaming would make it out of this group. They’ve dominated China since 2014. No other organization has as many LPL titles as EDG and yet, at least in this tournament, they’ve looked rather vincible.
Aside from losing twice to their Korean rivals, Edward Gaming nearly lost a game to Bangkok Titans! That’s right, a Wildcard region team nearly upset China’s greatest hope, and it was only through EDG’s superior team fighting that a 6k gold deficit was swung around.
Thankfully, EDG redeemed themselves with a crushing game against Europe’s H2k-Gaming, but to be the best at a tournament of this caliber requires a consistency that EDG have sadly not been able to show. Shek “AmazingJ” Wai-Ho has been rather underwhelming, and we’re still unsure if we’ll ever see Tong “Koro1” Yang fielded in the top lane this tournament.
EDG need to step up their game if they want to make a deep run in this tournament. If it weren’t for the ever present buffers of Ming “Clearlove” Kai and Tian “Meiko” Ye, one of the best Jungle and Support duos in the competition, then EDG may end up the same as they did last year… with an early exit.
How long will Clearlove have to make up for his team’s slight missteps?
What Could Have Been
Even if there weren’t any upsets in Group C, H2k and BKT did their best to make things closer than many expected. H2k in particular was the only team in the entire group to ever be ahead of SK Telecom at one point in any given game.
Yes, Europe’s #2 seed did end the group 2-4, but imagine if they had upset SK at that game. Had they not thrown away their lead in an ill-advised fight around Dragon pit, who knows? If the Titans also followed through on their astonishingly large lead on EDG why, we could have had a tie breaker scenario between EDG and H2k. Now wouldn’t that have been a crazy outcome?
Alas, the Worlds journey ends for these two teams. Call it a bad luck draft to be grouped with two overall favorites if you want, but at least both teams made the most of their circumstances with the games that they had. That in itself is admirable.
There are two more days of Group Stage action left! Keep track of which teams are advancing to the quarterfinals on our results page.
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