LEC champions G2 Esports survived elimination from First Stand and, in dominant fashion, secured a shock 3-0 victory over the LCK’s BNK FEARX (BFX).
Western League of Legends fans had been feeling down after early struggles. Just two days ago, G2 were stomped and outclassed 3-0 by Bilibili Gaming.
Yet, G2 continued the 3-0 trend of the tournament in a phenomenal win over South Korea’s second seed. This is the first time a Western team has defeated an LCK team in a best-of-five since Worlds 2020.
BFX has now been eliminated early, while G2 progresses to the Knockout Stages of the tournament. Here is how it happened.
Game 1: Hans Sama silences Diable
After G2’s last series was such a struggle, nerves were high amongst Western fans but G2 looked confident. They were playing proactively in the early game and their bot lane were winning the 2v2.
This would be a crucial match-up for the series as G2 needed to try and shut down prodigy botlaner Nam ‘Diable’ Dae-geun, who picked up pentakills in both of his previous First Stand series.
G2 picked up a lead as a brilliant call by Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther asked Steven ‘Hans Sama’ Liv to aim Ashe arrow at his tower while he surprised Lee ‘VicLa’ Dae-kwang by clearing the wave so that he was left stunned while taking turret aggro.
G2 looked much more confident and were playing team fights very well, allowing them to secure Ocean Soul and Baron 24 minutes in.
It looked like BFX were going to find a good fight and turn things around but with Ocean Soul, Rudy ‘SkewMond’ Semaan’s Xin Zhao survived on the verge of death for an eternity and created space for Sergen ‘BrokenBlade’ Çelik to pick up four kills.
G2 closed out the game with Elder buff, the first Elder Drake of the tournament, and a gold difference of over 12k.
Game 2: G2 Scale
G2 were very active in the early game again in Game 2.
Caps went all in with Azir ult to get Mel’s flash, but VicLa held strong and avoided a Skewmond gank. But Skewmond cleverly returned immediately for a re-gank and managed to secure first blood.
However, after that BFX were getting the best in skirmishes with their jungle, mid, and support winning multiple 3v3s.
BFX were dominating, and it looked like the series was going to be tied up. Yet, with a 5k gold lead, BFX overstayed at a tier 2 turret and gave G2 four kills with a lot of shut-down gold for Hans Sama’s Corki.
G2 had miraculously halved the gold deficit and then, after an awkward fight, a triple for Hans stopped BFX from getting Mountain Soul too.
A hard-fought ace at Baron by G2 had suddenly brought the gold back to even, but with an Azir and a Corki, G2 were heavily scaling and suddenly in the driver’s seat.
Huge damage by Hans helped G2 find a pick on an oddly quiet Diable around Baron, which G2 then secured and proceeded to rush down to the other side of the map to deny BFX’s attempted Dragon Soul sneak too.
It looked like the match would have one more twist as BFX got a pick on Hans during a base siege, but the rest of G2 then played the remainder of the fight beautifully to end the game and secure match point.
Game 3: G2 Finally Arrive at First Stand
By this point, G2 were on a roll while BFX seemed unable to find an answer.
G2 picked up an early lead again and this time held onto it as they repeatedly won fights and took over the map.
The team’s two newest members Lampros ‘Labrov’ Papoutsakis and Skewmond, the two newer players on G2’s roster who joined last year, were both having a fantastic series as they repeatedly found smart opportunities in fights and made the difference for their team.
Usually, G2 rely heavily on Caps, but the superstar midlaner had been having a rough tournament but this time his teammates were covering for him.
Yet even Caps was playing well in this game with fantastic plays on Zoe, even if he did accidentally teleport to a minion right next to him.
Brokenblade suffered his first, and only, death of the series but otherwise G2 cruised through to close out the series 3-0 in a result nobody expected.
Now, G2 will go to the semifinals and face an even sterner test in undefeated tournament favourites Gen.G.
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