RheingoldRiver brings match reports and interviews from the LCS floor

Match Report 2

After the first set was over, it was time for GGU to attempt another upset and for Curse to defend their current title as the second-best team in North America.

Game 1 started out with standard picks up until the very end, when GGU last-picked Tryndamere for ZionSpartan.  With Daydreamin on Blitzcrank and Curse aggressively taking both buffs at level 1, it seemed like the game would get off to an exciting start, but first blood wasn't until 10 minutes in midlane, with Jintae's Karthus ulting from bot.  Curse answered with a kill, but GGU was able to pick up both the first tower and dragon, both unanswered.  Curse didn't fall too far behind in the midgame, but ZionSpartan just farmed and farmed, ultimately able to split-push all the way down bot lane while the rest of GGU was fighting Curse around Baron.  Tryndamere became just too much to deal with, especially after he and the rest of his team had Baron, and GGU closed out the game just after 30 minutes.

Game 2 saw much more standard picks from both teams, with Curse going for a heavy dive comp and GGU pulling out a dual-AP AoE team with Vlad and Karthus.  For the first half hour of the game, Curse proved why they were going into the game as the favored team, sweeping past GGU to a 10k gold lead and 15-3 kill difference at 35 minutes.  However, Curse overcommitted in bot lane, letting GGU back into the game.  GGU were able to secure multiple barons in a row, with pick-offs from both teams making the game look like it would be decided in either direction multiple times.  Neither team wanted to over commit, remembering Curse's misfortune earlier, but ultimately Voyboy on Shen was able to split-push GGU's bot inhibitor as an impressive amount of damage coming out of Cop and the rest of Curse took out Jintae almost immediately in midlane and secured Curse the victory in the 4v5 fight.  Curse rushed down the lane and pushed the nexus at almost exactly the one-hour mark, having earned a team total of over 100k gold.

In game 3, the question was whether GGU could continue the streak of the team that took the first game, ultimately winning the series.  Curse went for the double-AoE-knock-up of Zac jungle and Nyjacky on AP Malphite, while GGU picked Nocturne and Twisted Fate for a strong global presence.  This game started out much more quickly than the first two had, with Zac ganking mid at 4 minutes and giving Voyboy's Kennen first blood.  NintendudeX stole his second objective of the weekend, this time taking away Curse's dragon at 11 minutes.  Despite this setback, Curse looked strong until GGU had very strong teamfight at 25 minutes, with ZionSpartan ghosting to arrive and cleaning up Curse.  GGU won another two teamfights, taking baron and top inhibitor, and they pushed for the nexus after Daydreamin helped his team secure a kill onto Malphite with a rocket grab.  Taking the third upset of the weekend, GGU moved onto the finals to fight TSM.

Match Interview 2

While the players were still wrapping up upstairs, I asked GGU's coach and manager, Hexo, a few questions about his perspective.

Rhein: How did you feel watching those games?

Hexo: Seeing the games we played yesterday, I felt really confident about the games we played today.  It was, of course, extremely nervous from my perspective since I have no power on the game; I'm sitting here and hoping for the best.  I was extremely nervous, I was on the edge of my seat and just shaking the whole best of 3 because all those games were extremely close, and I'm extremely glad we pulled it off.

You get to talk to the teams between the matches. What sort of things do you tell them?

After the first match, we won, we were all hyped up, we were all happy.  "We just need to keep going, just keep your heads up, keep the momentum up, and we got this next game, 2-0 easy."  And after the second game, unfortunately we lost, I pep-talked them a little bit, "we got this, we got this, we did it before, we're a better team.  We know we can pull it off, so just keep your heads up guys, and just go for the win."

After either a win or a loss, who gets more emotional, the team or you?

Probably the team.  I don't get that emotional, I keep it more for myself.  I try to keep my team in the game.  I don't want to show that I'm sad or mad at them, so I don't yell at them or anything, I just go behind them, sort of "keep going, we've got this next game, we've done this before, we got this."  After a victory, I just hug them, I'm really happy.  Just handshakes and congratulate them.

Do you ever have to calm them down?

Sometimes, they get pissed and sort of scream at each other.  Just say, "Dude, we got this game.  No need to get mad at the last game.  That game's done, it's over, just focus on the next one, and play your best."

What are you going to do to have the team prepare to fight TSM tomorrow?

We're gonna go back to the hotel, and we're gonna do some research on TSM, what have they been doing lately.  We're gonna be strategizingpicks, bans, and level ones and stuff like that.

Finally, I was talking to NintendudeX yesterday, and he said that the team was planning to move to a gaming house.  Do you plan move in with them?

Yeah, I'm planning on moving with them in the gaming house.  We should be moving in in time for the second split.  We didn't move in in the first place because there were people in school, and they couldn't move in, and we would have had only enough money to buy an apartment, which was six months minimum lease.  That would have screwed us over for the second split because it wouldn't have been enough room for the whole team.  But yeah, I plan on moving in with them.

Any final comments?

Just a shoutout to GGU, follow us on twitter, Facebook, GGUniversity on twitter and GoodGameUniversity on Facebook.

Match Interview 3

When Jintae came downstairs I got the chance to talk to him also.

Rhein: Congratulations on taking out Curse and moving onto the finals tomorrow.

Jintae: Thank you.

Did you expect that you were going to take the series?

Against Dignitas, we weren't really sure we were gonna beat them, but then for Curse, when we played against them we were more confident after we beat Dignitas.  We were way more confident.  We were like, ok, we can do this guys.  We just beat Dignitas, which is a team we had a really bad track record against, in scrims and past series matches from other seasons, and we just beat them out.  We played against Curse, and we came really prepared and we just beat them.  We were like, wow.  We were really excited.

In game 1, the thing that stood out was the last-pick Tryndamere.  Was that something you've been preparing for in scrims, or did you just decide to do it?

It's something we actually prepared for in scrims.  We had to look for something that we could actually abuse, like split push potential, and we did.  We had Tryndamere just split push all game, and it's just really a handful to deal with, because he can just escape and it's really hard to kill him, and it's so hard to 1v1 against Tryndamere.  So we just abused that factor, and we got inhibitors and we ended up just finishing out the game.  It was a pretty convincing game, too.

For the picks and bans, you often pick your toplane last or really close to last.  Why is that?

We value ZionSpartan having the counterpick.  He's like the main carry of the team, honestly.  So we just give that last pick to him, so he can just focus on winning on his lane, counterpicking his lane and winning out.  And hopefully he just carries us.  And he does really well.

In a best of 3, how do you decide whether you'll play the same champions each game or not?

It's good to pick different things because people don't expect it, and then they don't know how to play against it.  But then, picking the same things over helps your team too, at the same time, because it's things your team is comfortable with and is playing with all the time in scrims.  You practice those team compositions and just get really good at it, and you can perfect the strategies with it.  So we pretty much play what we're really comfortable with.  Like Daydreamin is a really good Blitzcrank. I played Karthus, he's one of my most comfortable champions, and our strat with him is, we're really good at 1v2ing.  I 1v2'd bottom or toplane, and then we just have the AD carry and support go mid, and we just abuse those factors.  Blitzcrank is really good 1v2 middle, and MashMe used to main Ezreal too, so everyone was playing pretty much all their comfort champs, and we just went with that.

Do you tend to go for comfort champs over team comp?

Those unconventional champions are really situational, so if we see a situation that we can actually use it in, for example the Tryndamere—we saw we could use Tryndamere and so we just picked it.  And then there are other champions we have in mind, but it's a secret.  If we see a good opportunity to, we'll bring them out, but right now we're just focusing on our comfort picks, and play a safe game.

For game 2, it was a really long game.

Yeah, it was ridiculously long.  I think it was like an hour.  That game, we just wanted to play safe, because they had Shen, Nocturne, and an Evelynn.  Eve just roams early on the map and just tries to gank every lane, and Nocturne can do that after level 6; he has global map pressure with Shen.  Our goal was just to not die, just keep farming, play through late game.  Our late game comp was a lot better, but we kinda had some difficulties early game, and then we had to come back from that.  We showed that we could come back from this 15k gold lead that Curse had, and I think if we actually managed to play out the early game and not die, we could have won that game.  It would have been a lot easier.

As an AP carry, how does your role change throughout a game, especially one that lasts that long and you actually get to 6-item builds?

With Karthus, I was just farming all game, getting my damage up.  The main thing with Karthus is just dealing with my global damage, but there are some other things.  You can initiate with your wall, but during late game I had to use my wall to peel for my AD carry.  So I put the wall on my AD carry, because Nocturne and Evelynn would dive him, and we just had all these players trying to kill our AD Carry.  If the AD carry dies, then you lose the fight and lose the match.  So my role in that was keep him alive late game, but early game I was disengaging fights from the front line, or going all in, diving into their team.

In game 3, it seemed like your Twin Shadows saved you from a really crucial play when Curse was standing in the bush near red buff.

Yeah.

How do you deal with the situation when you have no idea where they are?

It was really scary.  We were like, ok guys, we have no wards at Baron, and we have to find a way to deal with this situation.  They could be hiding in any of these bushes in our jungle; we had no wards there.  So I was like, ok, I have Twin Shadows.  I can use that, and my TF ulti was down, so we couldn't use vision off that.  Wherever the Twin Shadows are, that's pretty much where the enemy's position would be, and we just saw two of these shadows go in the bush near baron on our side of the jungle, and we just saw them there.  And that bought us a lot more time to clear them out, and they ran out of our jungle.  We were able to clear Baron after that and push lanes because we knew we were safe.  It was just to make sure they weren't rushing Baron, which is what we were afraid of.  If they'd actually gotten Baron, we would have lost that game.

So tomorrow, you're going to be fighting TSM.  Are you looking forward to it, or are you scared?

It's a little scary.  We didn't think we'd come all the way this far, but we're really excited to play against them.  They're a team we really want to beat also.  We've had pretty bad track record against them, but we've shown that we can beat teams like Dignitas and Curse, all these top 4 teams in NA, and we just want to try to win it out.

So you have new secret strats?

Yeah, we have some in store.  If we see the opportunity, we'll use them.  You'll probably see them.  Like today we brought out Tryndamere, it was pretty cool.

Any shoutouts or promotions?

Shoutouts to all our fans and supporters of GGU, and thank you guys, it's awesome.  My stream is twitch.tv/jintaee, and my Facebook is JintaeLoL, and twitter is @JintaeLoL.

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