2017 College Championship – Semifinals Recap

One team has secured its spot for Sunday’s 2017 League of Legends College Championship final on the NA LCS Arena stage. The University of Toronto continued its march for championship glory and will face the winner of today’s Maryville vs. Robert Morris-Illinois semifinal.

Toronto is attempting to secure the third consecutive win for Canada after University of British Columbia won the past two college titles. Toronto jungler Jacob “Susice” Bulir joined the team after winning the region title.

“The first few weeks that I subbed in were definitely rough,” Susice said. “[Regular UofT Jungler] Casey “yummibananas” Woo definitely has a very aggressive play style, and the idea for the team is to follow along with what he does. I play a more conservative style and like to farm a little bit more. I don’t like to invade as much, so we needed to focus on our macro decisions, rotations and things like that over just skirmishing all the time.”

You can catch the Maryville-RMU semifinal match today (5/27) at Noon PT and see Toronto face the winner Sunday (5/28) at Noon PST on watch.lolesports.com.

Toronto 3, Carnegie Mellon 1

After blitzing Carnegie Mellon early for a 2-1 lead, Toronto had an unorthodox but effective strategy to close out game four and punch their ticket to the Finals.

“We’ve been working on teamwork,” Toronto senior mid laner James “JhEEsh” Swann said. “Even if you watch CLG videos or TSM, they all emphasize teamwork and trust. A bad call that everyone follows is better than a good call that only a couple people follow, so we always try to make sure that we’re cohesive as a unit and go in where other people go in.”

Freshman top laner Alvin “Gaow Gaiy” Ngo was left for dead and tasked with cancelling recalls while the rest of Toronto was able to rush past and destroy the Nexus before Carnegie Mellon could respond. Carnegie Mellon was able to pick up three kills, including a double kill by senior top laner Patrick “MegaZero” Glinsman, but time had run out.

Game one was a dream start for Toronto, finishing 19 kills to 0. Gaow Gaiy took first blood three minutes in and Toronto grew their kill lead to eight by 15 minutes. The bot tower taken by Carnegie Mellon senior ADC Daniel “Coggles” Farina was the only blemish on an otherwise perfect game for Toronto.

Carnegie Mellon responded in game two after another rough start. Despite being targeted with repeated ganks early, Coggles propelled Carnegie Mellon to a win with a quadra kill in the final team fight. Carnegie Mellon senior jungler Christoffer “Tiggy” Thygesen had a bounce back game, finishing 4/3/10 on Sejuani.

“I felt pretty confident with my Sejuani play; I’ve been practicing her a lot,” Tiggy said. “There were a few moments where I actually could have had game-winning ultimates, but I missed twice. I made up for them in fight-winning ultimates in other places, so I can’t be really too mad at myself.”

Game three was a back-and-forth affair before Toronto ultimately took control. Carnegie Mellon countered the over-aggression of Toronto to take their first gold lead of the game at 27 minutes, but it was short-lived. Toronto’s jhEEsh scored a key double kill in Dragon pit at 30 minutes to allow Toronto to secure Infernal Drake and Baron Nashor.

Toronto also beat Carnegie Mellon 3-1 in the Campus Series East Finals.

“It would be cool if University of Toronto went on to win it all so that we were kind of validated,” said MegaZero, who finished his college - and likely his competitive League of Legends - career with a combined 7/9/16 KDA.

Toronto freshman ADC Sang “Erry” Park finished with a combined 19/5/23 KDA.