KOO Tigers settle for 2nd place in Group A

After Week 1, Korea's KOO Tigers were the favorite to come out on top in Group A at the 2015 World Championship.

But surprisingly, they fell just short after narrowly losing out to Taiwan's Flash Wolves. After a long day of games, we caught up with KOO’s top laner Kyung-ho “Smeb” Song and support Beom-hyeon “GorillA” Kang to see what they thought of landing in 2nd place on their run to the Quarterfinals.

"So after winning our last game against Counter Logic Gaming in the first week, we had great momentum coming into this week," Smeb says. "I do think that we broke their spirit when we won against them twice in a row, especially that big. And I do believe in momentum. They were coming into today’s games just crushed after they lost two games to us."

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In KOO's opening game of Week 2 against North America's CLG, GorillA locked in Tahm Kench for the first time in competitive play. He got the idea after seeing another team try out the River King here at Worlds. "We watched ahq play Tahm Kench and we thought it was pretty good," says Gorilla. "So we started practicing it and it fit pretty well with our composition so we used him. It was a great contributor to the win today."

GorillA knuckled down, coming away with a phenomenal 1/1/20 KDA in the game against CLG, slurping up enemies and teammates alike all over the Rift. Tahm Kench is best used to protect hyper AD carries, he explains, such as Jong-in "PraY" Kim's Jinx, and he was pleased with the great synergy he and his teammates enjoyed throughout the game. Spewing chewed champs into Jinx’s chompers allowed the rest of KOO to swoop in and finish off the job, and like a friendly version of Jonah’s whale, he swallowed up his own teammates plenty of times, saving them from Eugene “Pobelter” Park's Event Horizons.

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Yet even as CLG fell behind in levels and items, they'd try to pick fights with KOO. "Because they needed an opportunity to catch up, they wanted to fight when they had numbers -- so like 4v3, 3v5, 3v4," says GorillA. "But I think Tahm Kench is good with his ultimate to join fights, and that's how we counter-acted their strategy."

KOO dismantled CLG in just 23 minutes, one of the fastest wins of the 2015 World Championship thus far.

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They then went on to soundly dispatch Brazil's paiN Gaming before facing the one team that's consistently been able to get the better of KOO: Taiwan's Flash Wolves.

"In the first week I think we lost because we didn’t do so well in the pick and bans phase. We were just a little too overconfident in the first week," says Smeb. "But in the second week, they had a good momentum going into the game, so that’s why they beat us."

The Flash Wolves won all of their games today, and were up against KOO after taking their own shot at Counter Logic Gaming. For the third time in a row, Smeb locked in Darius, believing it to be a strong pick after having success with it in practice. "I think that even with giving us Darius, they thought if they could make their composition well against Darius, they could still beat us, which they did,” Smeb explains. “So I think they were confident in giving me Darius and playing around it."

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He also says that choosing the juggernaut as KOO's first pick against the Flash Wolves was his biggest regret from the game. "That allowed them to make a good initiating composition which we didn’t have. We didn’t have any means of initiating on them."

While the Koreans were able to find advantages in the early laning phase against the Flash Wolves, things went south after Smeb gave up a kill to Lu-hsi "Steak" Chou's Lulu. "I think the turning point of the game was when I got killed chasing after Lulu up top," says Smeb. "And when the bot duo lane of Kennen and Kalista died after going after LeBlanc with no vision."

Maple's LeBlanc absolutely terrorized KOO, who didn't have any means to counter it, claims GorillA. The Flash Wolves' mid laner erased KOO with his combos and eventually became too much for them to handle. But even though they were defeated by the Flash Wolves, Smeb's not too worried about it. "I don’t think by losing to Flash Wolves for our last game broke [our] momentum,” he says. “So if we just ride this well, I think we have a great chance of going all the way to the Finals."

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GorillA on the other hand, is a little less sure. "I lost 0-3 in the Quarterfinals last year. This year I think it's going to be a lot harder than last year." He says that if he could choose any opponent to play against, it'd be a team from Group B. "Anyone except Fnatic is fine. We've faced Fnatic a lot in scrims and practices and they are kind of scary!" And he was also impressed by another EU team. "We think Origen is a really good team. We thought our Korean physical abilities would outshine the EU meta but it wasn't the case, and I think OG is really good."

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Unfortunately, there was also one team he wasn't too impressed with. "I don't think that there was too much impressive about us in the Group Stage," GorillA says. "If we were impressive, we would have taken 1st place. I think we were just okay."

We'll see if GorillA has what it takes to get further than he did in Season 4 when the KOO Tigers face off in the Quarterfinals next week. Let us know what you thought of the games, and to find out who KOO will be matched up against, tune in to the Quarterfinals Group Draw after the final set of games on Sunday, October 11th.

For more Worlds 2015 coverage, head over to Lolesports.com