Team 8 throw everything at Bjergsen to take down Team SoloMid
"I think that was our best game of the season," said Team 8's jungler Braeden "Porpoise8" Schwark's after their intense 40-minute victory against Team SoloMid.
Breaking their Saturday curse, Team 8 came into the game against TSM well prepared. "We planned almost the entire week," he says. "Thinking about different things they were going to do in the picks and bans phase and in the game. We just studied them and studied them."
The draft Team 8 ended up with was a very comfortable one, according to Porpoise. "They first rotation chose Shen and Nautilus, and then we got Kalista as a first pick. That's what we wanted," he says of the picks and ban phase. TSM then tried to counter the Kalista with the all-in potential from Vi and Nautilus' ultimates, so Team 8 responded by locking in Azir for his excellent disengage.
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"All of our champions worked really well together. We had a lot of engage and a lot of disengage, so we could play it any way we wanted to." The only thing that had them nervous was Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg's dangerous AP Ezreal. "Bjergsen did really well on the Ezreal. He got very, very strong. That was the big thing we were scared of, was not being able to kill him in fights."
"If we left him alive, he was going to clean us all up we felt like, so the whole game we were calling to avoid his ultimates and avoid his damage so that we didn't have to always keep backing and healing up," Porpoise explains. "We did really well! Then, finally at the last fight, we killed the Ezreal."
Destroyed is more like it. Team SoloMid weren't able to get a solid engage, as they couldn't poke anyone down before Marcus "Dyrus" Hill ran in. With TSM's tank busy, Team 8 knew this was the perfect opportunity to focus down Ezreal. "We were all yelling to go on the guy, and we all just tried to follow up and do as much damage to him, just throw stuff at him."
They ended up throwing almost everything they had to take down TSM's star mid laner, including three aggressive Flashes and the ultimates of Gragas, Kalista, and Maokai. Jason "WildTurtle" Tran had minimal impact in the fight, and despite the peeling efforts of Lucas "Santorin" Larsen and Jang-sik "Lustboy" Ham -- and the fancy footwork of Bjergsen himself -- Ezreal wasn't able to live through Team 8's punishing onslaught, and it cost TSM the game.
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Now that they've taken out TSM, Porpoise and Team 8 are looking ahead to their Day 2 match against Team Impulse. "Our game tomorrow will actually be really tough because TIP is so unpredictable and they're so aggressive too," Porpoise says. But he also thinks that it's because of that aggression that TIP's more prone to make mistakes. "[The outcome] is really dependent on how we play, but I'm feeling good about it."
What did you think of Team 8's upset against Team SoloMid? Let us know in the comments below, and don't miss Team 8 vs. TIP tomorrow, right here on Lolesports. If you've missed any of the NA LCS so far, you can catch every game via the spoiler-free VODs page.
