RheingoldRiver brings match reports and interviews from the LCS floor

Match Report 2

After yet another upset for the third-place match, it was finally time to determine the champions of the LCS Spring Playoffs.  Did GGU have what it takes to defeat the top seed?  Or could TSM hold onto their position and secure their first-place finish?

Both of the first two games started with a first blood before creeps spawned, going to TSM's Reginald in game 1 and to GGU's DontMashMe in game 2.  In both cases, the team that got the first blood was able to massively snowball off it.  The story of the first game was fantastic dives by Reginald on Twisted Fate and team fight and objective dominance leading to their victory at 31 minutes.  In game 2, it was GGU's turn to exert complete control of the match.  TSM were able to pick up a few early objectives, but GGU continued piling kills onto DontMashMe's Twitch, and he got too massive for TSM to deal with—despite a perfectly-executed dive onto the GGU AD carry at about 27 minutes, Twitch was able to turn on his Spray and Pray and decimate the TSM team, forcing TSM's surrender.

The series now tied at 1-1, TSM knew for certain that GGU were a force to be reckoned with.  GGU again secured first blood, thanks to a botlane gank from NintendudeX's Nocturne.  However, WildTurtle and Xpecial were able to take the first turret of the game, and the blue team was also able to secure the first dragon.  GGU did win a fight and a dragon for themselves at 21 minutes, but Diana and Renekton's dives onto Twitch proved too much for GGU to deal with, and TSM were able to melt through DontMashMe's health bar practically before fights even started over and over.  GGU had a chance to win a fight at 32 minutes, as they camped a bush on the side of midlane, but unfortunately Daydreamin's Death Sentence could not connect, and TSM ended up taking out GGU's entire base and the nexus at 40 minutes.

GGU needed to win game 4 to not be knocked down to second place, and once again they were able to shut down WildTurtle and feed DontMashMe, this time on Caitlyn.  GGU had a misstep at dragon at 16 minutes, allowing TSM to pick up a 4-0 fight, when each member of GGU tried to dive in one on one but TSM always had the cooldowns to deal with the potential assassination.  The game remained fairly close until 27 minutes, when TSM successfully pincered around GGU but then found themselves fighting directly on top of Jintae's defile.  GGU won that fight 4-1 and then took a risky baron at 31 minutes despite TSM's ward in the pit.  Daydreamin sacrificed himself for his team's objective, but TSM wasn't happy with the kill only on Blitzcrank, and their commitment to trying to take out more members of GGU resulted in two deaths of their own.  The last fight of the game was in TSM's base, and again GGU came out victorious, pushing the nexus at 35 minutes.

Game 5 saw GGU needing to win two games in a row for the first time in the entire weekend, and TSM needing to stop them from doing so.  With Twisted Fate left open, TSM first-picked him for Reginald, and TheOddOne was again played Cho'gath, so far undefeated on that champion throughout the weekend.  For the third game of the series, DontMashMe secured first blood for his team, and again the game saw repeated lane shifts between the AP carries and AD-support duo lanes between mid and botlane.  A clean grab onto Xpecial at 15 minutes could have given GGU dragon, but instead they opted for turrets, pulling almost to a 2k gold lead.  However, fantastic positioning from TSM and a dragon steal from TheOddOne gave TSM a 4-2 exchange and closed the gold gap a few minutes later.  The rest of the game consisted of Reginald diving turrets with his Destiny, splitting the GGU team and catching them off guard repeatedly.  TSM secured Baron for themselves at 31 minutes in addition to taking several dragons, and they continued to increase their gold lead, closing out the game just before the 40-minute mark, securing themselves the title of the best team in NA.

Match Interview 2

Rhein: You did just lose to TSM, but you were able to take it to five games.  Did you expect that result?

DontMashMe: Yeah, I kinda did expect that result, but I was hoping that we would win the very last game.

At the beginning of the weekend, before you played the first game, if I had told you, you're going make it to game 5 against TSM in the finals, would you have been surprised?

I definitely wouldn't have believed that.  We just planned so hard for Dignitas, and beating Curse was just like wow to me...then, after that, making it to the finals.  It's still sinking in that we made it to the finals, and I'm pretty happy with myself, but I'm never satisfied with myself as a player, I always want more.  But overall I'm very happy with our performance, and we made it very far.

You've only been playing with Daydreamin for a couple weeks.  What's it like as an ADC to transition to a new support player?

It depends on the play style.  If you both have really good synergy together, it will become easy to know each other, what we're doing, and I feel like when I had Bloodwater, we played well, but we just didn't have the synergy.  But with Daydreamin, I have the synergy and, for me, I'm very adaptable.  I can adapt to certain play styles, and with Daydreamin I think I'm at my greatest potential.

In the lane, which one of you makes the play calls?

Probably one of the callers, mainly around the team.  That's probably why Bloodwater and I clashed a bit, sometimes he'd call something, sometimes I'd call something.  It still worked out; it just didn't work out as well.  But with Miles, Daydreamin, he just listens to me and he usually feeds me information and I just call after that.

In the first two games, first blood happened before creeps even spawned.  How much does that impact the way you think about the game?

It kinda brings us down, but we always think positive.  When someone gets first-blooded, it's a huge gold advantage, and that's why they kinda snowballed off that.  They invaded us; they tried to make more plays off that.  Overall, our morale is still good, but it's a little down.  We do try our best to keep our morale up.

But then you were able to do the same thing to them in Game 2.  Does that significantly impact the way you play?

Yeah.  Whenever you have an advantage, you go all-out.  You just pressure the enemy team a lot, and that's what most great teams do, they just pressure and pressure when they have an advantage.

Compare the games you played today with the games you played on Friday.   Which set was more stressful?

Definitely the TSM one.  It was really close, especially Game 5, that was the closest one of all, and we did so many misplays.  They probably did some misplays.

In the two games you won, you put a huge amount of pressure on WildTurtle, and completely shut him down.

My team generally tries to snowball whoever, and in the best-case scenario you snowball me.  And in general, when I get snowballed against TSM, we generally do well.  It's kinda hard to gank Dyrus and Reginald, but in our opinion it's really easy to gank the botlane.

So the goal was to snowball you forward as opposed to WildTurtle back?

Yes.

You had a baron that seemed very risky, but you were able to secure it, and only Daydreamin ended up diving. Who made that call, and did you expect it to go that well?

The baron call was ZionSpartan, because he was backing and viewing the map, and everyone else was just farming neutrals and around midlane.  Zion called that Reginald was bottom, and someone else was in the jungle, and they didn't have any wards, and we just ran straight toward it and when we were on the baron, I told Daydreamin to zone out whoever was coming, and they just finished doing Dragon actually, and OddOne smited, so we definitely wanted to go for the baron instantly, especially when we're in position.  So it was actually a team call.  People think I make all the calls, but my team also makes calls themselves.

In game 5, if you could have changed one thing about how you played the game, what would it have been?

It would definitely be positioning.  There was one dragon fight where Jintae just blew up.  Same with Zion. It probably didn't help that I got caught, but early game was just positioning.  Just maybe moving an inch this way, moving an inch that way, something like that.

What new champions or strategies can we look out for from GGU in the summer split?

For some reason, most teams think we run poke comps or kite comps, and maybe we'll have something super hard engage next time.  We kinda revolve around outplaying and just kiting back, but probably something toward a crazy AoE comp.

Any final shoutouts you want to make?

Shoutout to my girlfriend Raina, shoutout to my teammates, family, friends.  And a shoutout to GGUniversity on twitter and Facebook.

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