After a fantastic five-game series against Cloud9 in the first round of the 2022 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) summer playoffs, CLG regressed in their losers bracket matchup against Golden Guardians. CLG did not look clean in their most recent series, but were still able to move past GG — all it took was five games.
Game 1 went as expected in a battle between the fourth and eighth seeds. CLG took control of the game early and used their advantage to push around GG. However, the game oddly lasted longer than expected; especially since CLG had a lead of over 10k gold at the 30-minute mark. GG continued to weasel their way into capitalizing on CLG’s mistakes, but with an insurmountable lead, CLG eventually closed out the game without any real comeback threat.
CLG would not be able to get away from their mistakes in Game 2; with GG flexing Poppy into the top lane, CLG were on the back foot throughout the game — they continuously stumbled over themselves while GG waited for times to strike. Against a team with a Zeri, letting any room for error is a recipe for disaster; CLG’s old bot laner Trevor “Stixxay” Hayes took those mistakes straight to the bank in the game’s final fight, even pulling off a pentakill with the champion to put the series at 1-1 apiece.
His Zeri is SCARY @Stixxay #LCS #GGWIN pic.twitter.com/D7c697GR2f
— LCS (@LCSOfficial) August 26, 2022
CLG performed better in Game 3, but they were still far from clean. The game was dead, even at the 25-minute mark before CLG finally started to pull away after a team fight win awarded Baron to CLG. But despite being up 4k gold, the team was still losing team fights, giving GG several chances to bounce back. Although they tried their best to throw, CLG were able to close Game 3 to put GG on match point.
However, the Golden Guardians held strong; in the potential last game of their season, GG played on point and continued to attack CLG’s sloppy play. This game in particular was the best GG have played all series at the same time of CLG playing the worst. GG had a 5k gold lead before 20 minutes as they held that lead until the end of the game to force a Game 5.
Paging @palafoxlol for cleanup duty #LCS pic.twitter.com/YwQl3JWrVs
— LCS (@LCSOfficial) August 27, 2022
Game 5 started out poorly once again for CLG, but for the first time this whole series, CLG won a huge team fight and ran away with the lead. Counter Logic Gaming were in complete control from the 20-minute point on — the team finally came together and took down GG to move on in the losers bracket. CLG will play one of the losers from the remaining two upper bracket matchups next week.
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