The first MSI 2016 Finalist is...
Korea’s SKTelecom T1 is the first team heading into the Finals here at the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational in Shanghai, after beating China's Royal Never Give Up in front of a home crowd. In doing so, they also crushed China’s hopes of claiming a second MSI trophy.
Coming into the series it was SKT who surprisingly was the underdog. Their Round Robin performance last week left many people wondering what the hell had happened to the World Champions. Many didn't expect them to drop a game here at the tournament -- so imagine the surprise when they dropped four consecutive games. It was something the world hadn’t seen out of SKT in over 650 days and it was easy to pin China's in-form RNG as favorites here in front of a passionate Chinese audience.
Though, at the end of the day, SKT is still SKT. The only team to win two World Championships is now the only team to compete in two Finals of the Mid-Season Invitational. Now they have another chance to claim the only trophy that's missing from their cabinet.
"All the teams that participated at MSI were truly the champions of their regions. They were all so good," said SKT's Coach Kkoma following the match.
Today, we saw first hand what makes SKT just that much better than the best teams in the world. But they didn't come out of the gate swinging. In fact, it was RNG who got the upper hand in the first game of the series.
It was a story of RNG's Looper and the top lane matchup that started in champion select. RNG forced SKT to pick Poppy and heavily countered it with Looper's Trundle pick. After a solo First Blood and baiting out Faker’s Teleport, Looper snowballed his advantage into two kills and a 40 CS lead over Duke. So it was only fitting that the final push to take down SKT’s Nexus saw every member of RNG fall, including Looper -- who, after being revived by his Guardian Angel, clubbed his way to a Game 1 win for China.
“All of our players are veterans. They know how to take care of their own mentality. I just focus on telling them, since we lost this one, let's try a different way," explains Coach Kkoma. "Let's do different picks and bans, a different game style, and that's how we prepared for Game 2.”
SKT prepared and came back with a vengeance -- Game 2 was the third fastest game we’ve seen at the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational. Faker was an absolute monster on Azir, a champion which he was called out for last week during their four game losing streak. Today, there was none of that -- he solo killed Xiahou, who was on LeBlanc, and proceeded to take control of the game. His coordination with Wolf and the Azir ult into Soraka silence was beautiful to watch. Not to mention it helped SKT tie the series up 1-1.
“I enjoyed playing Azir the most,” Faker told us with a grin. “I was able to repeatedly beat the crap out of my opponents. I think I played better than last week, but there's still some areas for improvement.”
Game 3 saw the first Leona of the tournament locked in and brought a wild cheer from the Chinese crowd. Everyone was wondering what the genius Mata could do on this champion rarely seen in pro play, and while there were glimmers of brilliance, it failed to shine as brightly as it could have. Instead, it was Faker again who stole the show, this time on Fizz. He roamed like crazy and enabled his team to gain huge advantages across the map. Between Faker and Duke’s Ekko, they had a ton of Mejai’s stacks between them, which proved too much for RNG to handle.
SKT had one game to close it out while RNG were going to have to dig themselves out of a hole if they wanted to make it to the Finals. Yet RNG didn’t do anything to help their chances in champion select.
“As they were the blue side, since they don't have enough ban cards to ban all of the good, overpowered champions, they tried to open up a lot and divide up the champions," says Kkoma. "But once we got Ryze and Maokai, I was sure at that point that we were going to win that match.”
If you’re going to hand over Ryze and Maokai to two of the best Ryze and Maokai players in the world, you’re going to have a bad day. This is what RNG found out first hand in Game 4 as SKT closed out the series 3-1 with a 9-0 game.
Tomorrow, North America’s Counter Logic Gaming will take on the LMS' Flash Wolves in the second MSI Semifinal, a game which SKT will be watching closely.
“Both teams have their own strengths and weaknesses that are completely different, so it's hard to say which is more difficult," says Kkoma.
He continued, "Whichever team advances to the Final, I'm confident we can beat them. Though I’m personally rooting for NA because I follow NA as a region."
It will take one hell of a team to beat SKT with how well they performed today. Though if we’ve learned anything from this tournament, it’s that anything can happen. Whatever the results, the only one winner we know for sure is regional competition. Something we can’t wait to see more of in the future and something that Kkoma's already very excited about.
“Since this tournament was so competitive and each team matched one another's level at such a high point, I would like domestic fans to cheer and support [their region] rather than point criticism at them," says Kkoma. "Even for the next tournament, like at Worlds, I couldn't say who would win because all the regions are so good at this point.”
Tune in tomorrow to Lolesports for the second Semifinal and remember to hit us up on Twitter with #MSI2016 to share your favorite moments from the games.
