Edward Gaming unsatisfied with 2nd place in Group C

It wasn't pretty, but they got there.

After getting rolled over by SKTelecom T1 in sub-30 minute games, struggling against the Bangkok Titans, and righting the ship against H2K, China's Edward Gaming locked in their Quarterfinals spot. Edward Gaming's jungler Ming "Clearlove" Kai makes sure he told us how he felt about their play before in the interview room.

"Our performance in the Groups was a failure."

Wow.

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Given the expectations of EDG coming into the tournament, some placing them as favorites alongside teams such as SKT or LGD Gaming, failure might be a bit strong. But it's easy to understand why the team isn't pleased.

"Taking into consideration our physical conditions for players right now, we didn't do very well in the Group Stage," EDG coach Aaron explains, "But it's within the range we can accept.” Aaron goes on to explain that in addition to Koro1 and Pawn's recurring back problems, most of the team got sick upon arrival in Paris, and hadn't quite recovered.

Their game in Week 2 of the Group Stage against SKT showcased many of the problems that EDG has struggled with throughout the first round of Worlds 2015. "They picked Elise… and they wanted to play a game that was focused around snowballing the [Ryze] and the top lane," Clearlove explains, "On our side, I [picked] Gragas and we had a Kalista bot lane. If my Level 2 gank in bot lane worked, we would have had a huge advantage -- but it didn't happen that way."

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"We did prepare well for our games against SKT… during the Ban-and-Picks period, we had a slight advantage," Aaron recalls. "But we failed too much against them in the first three minutes. When we saw Clearlove fail a gank bottom lane, [and] our top got ganked, we had already lost to them."

SKT jungler Bengi capitalized by stealing Clearlove's Red Buff and then executed several dives on AmazingJ in the top lane. "Because of that, we fell behind a lot," Clearlove says, "The tempo was really taken away from us by SKT."

EDG went down in under 25 minutes, among the shortest games in the tournament, and as EDG tells it, the team went on full tilt. "Because we lost a very devastating game to SKT, it impacted us emotionally," Clearlove explains. "We were kind of tilting up and down a bit in the next game against BKT, so there were a couple of mistakes made."

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"The way our players get mentally hurt after a game against SKT isn't because we can't lose to them, it's the way we lost to them -- it's not something we can accept,” Aaron states emphatically. “So it hurt us mentally against BKT. After [Champion Select] we were very confident we could win, but because the loss to SKT still affected us, we brought a bad mindset to this game -- it made it hard to win against BKT in a short time... I think we were worried, so we got too hurried to win [the game]."

There has been some speculation on whether EDG might have performed better with top laner Koro1, after substitute player AmazingJ struggled in several of EDG’s games. But as Aaron explained, playing AmazingJ is part of EDG’s gameplan. "The reason we didn't want Koro1 to play in the Group Stage was because of his physical problems -- but he's participated in scrims against other teams. We wanted to take this time for Koro1 to get better. Then in the next matches, it will be AmazingJ or Koro1 based on our strategy. We'll have two different types of tops to choose from."

EDG now looks ahead to potential opponents that they’ll face in the Quarterfinals and beyond. “I think Origen and KT [Rolster] have a higher chance to get out of Group D,” Aaron says, “For Group B, I think Cloud9 has an early advantage, but both Fnatic and IG have a chance -- they are strong as well. If I had to say two teams, I think Cloud9 and IG [get out].”

“I don’t really have a preference [for what team we play in the Quarterfinals], we can perform well against any of them.”

We also asked Aaron and Clearlove about particular players that impressed them from other Groups. “Maple is pretty strong,” Aaron says. “He especially plays LeBlanc very well. I’m also impressed by GorillA -- he plays Morgana and Tahm Kench really well. Another player would be xPeke.”

Clearlove agreed, stating after a moment, “OG’s mid laner [xPeke] impresses me. Every time I see him, he’s always very stable. And he also brings a lot of flair and creativity to the game. I’m always surprised in watching him play.”

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Despite all their issues, EDG doesn’t think the two-game series against SKT, or their struggles against BKT, represent their real strength, and they’ll still have success moving forward. "I think that EDG hasn't really performed to our best yet,” Clearlove says. “Hopefully next time we'll let you see the real EDG."

Aaron agrees. “I think we can do much better further in the tournament."

“Hopefully we can still win the World Championship.”

To see if xPeke and Origen can seal the deal and join Clearlove and Edward Gaming in the Quarterfinals, tune in tomorrow at 12:00 Central European Summer Time or 3:00 AM Pacific Time.

 

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

Frank Fields is a Senior Editor for Riot Games Esports Web Content team. Talk to him on Twitter about ordered lists, where your comments will be assimilated into the Matrix. You can also find him in Solo Queue in the Diamond 5 retirement home.