Day 4 sees big upsets as Quarterfinals are locked

As Day Four of the Singapore Group stage dawned, every team but KaBuM still had a shot at advancing to the Quarterfinals. Consistency proved to be the defining attribute of the day, as the many win-and-in matches fell in favor of Cloud9 and OMG, but left Europe out of the Knockout phase of the 2014 World Championship.

KaBuM vs Alliance

All that Alliance had to do to secure their spot in the Quarterfinals was win against a team that had yet to take a single match in Groups. But what happened is perhaps the biggest upset in League of Legends history. KaBuM had a great champion select and got comfort picks across the board. From there, they were able to build small advantages in the early game that led to an inevitable win by mid game. This match would be key for what would happen later.

Cloud9 vs Najin White Shield

With Alliance losing to KaBuM, Cloud9 had a chance to lock down their Quarterfinals berth by defeating NaJin White Shield -- and in so doing knock the Europeans out of the race. And Cloud9 showed up huge. Though they were behind for much of the game, Hai's split-pushing Zed created chaos to give time for Cloud9's items to catch up with their shot-calling. A great Equalizer by Balls' Rumble and top-notch execution and precision by Meteos and Hai led to an ace and the win.

OMG vs LMQ

OMG's match against LMQ was somewhat of a farm-fest. A great level one by LMQ setup an early lead, but they squandered that advantage by trading kills off of questionable tower dives. Unfortunately for LMQ, the game spiraled out of control as OMG used superior vision control to gradually squeeze LMQ out of the game.

Bonus: NaJin White Shield vs Cloud9 - Tiebreaker

While this match was mostly a freeroll, the prize was not having to face a much-feared Samsung Galaxy Blue in the Quarterfinals. NaJin White Shield had a much better champion select this time around, and Hai's small champion pool was a bit exposed when Shield first-picked Zilean, anticipating an early Zed pick by Cloud9 -- which Shield promptly took on the second rotation. Cloud9 got behind early in the game and was never able to recover. Though some interesting split-pushes and guerrilla-style hit-and-run tactics kept them in the game for a while, eventually Save's Kassadin was able to shut down the split-push and NaJin won the game shortly thereafter.

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