Spring Split Week 3
On the first day of week three in the North America LCS, two of the most dominant teams in years past go head to head. TSM and Cloud 9 meet on the rift to reignite a long time rivalry between the two teams who have been trading places at the top of the NA LCS charts for the past few years. This go around though there are quite a few new players on the roster of each team. Let’s get right into picks and bans.
Cloud 9 banned some very viable champions that have been seeing a lot of play on the pro circuit at the moment, those champions included Poppy, Lulu, and Elise. For Team Solo Mid, the bans were targeted at some very good champions in the current meta; Gangplank, Graves and then a targeted ban towards the Cloud 9 support in Alistar. Starting off in the top lane for Cloud 9, Balls took the demon catfish Tahm Kench onto the rift. The new players on the team this year were up next with Rush taking Nidalee into the jungle and Jensen opting to take Corki to the mid lane. Cloud 9’s bottom lane, comprised of Sneaky and Hai, would feature Tristana and Braum. On TSM’s side of the rift, Lissandra was taken to top lane piloted by Hauntzer. TSM’s jungler, Svenskeren, took the land shark Rek’sai. The star of TSM, Bjergsen, took to middle with Viktor, and the bottom lane was comprised of Doublelift and Yellowstar playing Lucian and Janna. With picks like Lissandra and Janna, TSM’s ability to team fight looked to be quite staggering as well as having the ability to potentially pick off enemies with the high damage potential of Lucian. On the other side of the rift though, Cloud 9 was running quite the poke comp with champions like Nidalee and Corki.
With both teams staying relatively even on gold and cs, the game was at a near stalemate for just over 20 minutes. However just as both teams were simultaneously about to kill each other’s first inhibitor, two skirmishes broke out between the TSM and Cloud 9. The fight in Cloud 9’s top lane was a short lived one between Jensen and Balls from Cloud 9 and Doublelift, Yellowstar, and Svenskeren of TSM. Mere seconds after TSM takes down the inhibitor turret, Doublelift relentless pursuits in to lay down a massive burst of damage coupled with the true damage from red buff and snatches a kill from Balls, while also managing to push Jensen back to fountain while he and his teammates continue to lay siege to the Cloud 9 base. At the same time, Cloud 9 is beating down the door in TSM’s bottom lane with Hai, Rush and Sneaky. The three from C
loud 9 managed to destroy the inhibitor and while attempting to defend his base alone, Hauntzer is caught out by Hai and Sneaky and CC’d into submission. At the end of both fights Cloud 9 comes out just barely on top with a small gold lead of about 1000.
Just when the 
game was starting to get a little bit uninteresting, the two teams that have been to the World championship multiple years in a row show the audience exactly why they are considered some of the best teams in North America. At just about 25 minutes into the game TSM is on their back foot attempting to retreat away from a chasing Cloud 9 in the mid lane. Just when it looked as though TSM might get caught and punished for their relentless siege of Cloud 9’s base, Svenskeren turns and flashes into the four chasing members of Cloud 9 and hits a huge knock up that sends Jensen, Hai and Sneaky flying. At the same time Hauntzer teleports in on Lissandra and gets a nice combo of CC down onto the disoriented Cloud 9. Hauntzer locks down Jensen with Lissandra’s ult and that gives TSM just the time they need to turn and fight Cloud 9 in full force. At this point in time Cloud 9 is on a swift retreat back down middle lane. But before they can reach the safety of the turret Doublelift and Bjergsen each pick up two kills, leaving on Rush alive to stop the onslaught of TSM. TSM swiftly destroys two inhibitors after the successful team fight and chooses to take the safe route and return to base for now.
Seeing their defeat fast looming, Cloud 9 makes an attempt to slay Baron Nashor and get the buff to help stave off the assault from TSM. While Cloud 9 does manage to get the buff from Baron it proves to be a costly endeavor as TSM collapses on them and kills Jensen, Hai and Balls. At the end there is quite a skirmish between Balls and Doublelift that eventually results in Cloud 9’s nexus being obliterated at just over 28 minutes.
While the game was back and forth for more than half of its length, TSM eventually was able to swing the result widely in their favor with the kills being 4 for Cloud 9 and a staggering 12 for TSM. In this game between the former champions of NA LCS, TSM proved to be the victor. You can check out the entire game below and as always, keep it posted here for more LCS action and anything happening on the rift!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TipoHzhyZhM&w=560&h=315]
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