S. Samek
Two heavyweight contenders enter the ring for the championship and a number one seed at worlds. The loser still gets a worlds birth,but in the second position.
These two fighters are Team Liquid and Cloud 9. NA’s best performing teams throughout the entire year.
Team Liquid comes in with a combined regular season two split record of 28-8 after having matching 14-4 regular splits. During both of them they earned the number one seed for the playoffs. The took advantage of it in spring to win their third split in a row and set themselves up for a forth. They knocked out Clutch gaming in the semi-finals to advance to the finals after a bye in quarterfinals.
Cloud 9 finished second at 14-4 during the spring and 12-6 and tied for second in summer. They finished with an overall record of 26-10. They won a tie breaker over CLG to take second place for the split and earn a bye. They then defeated CLG in semi-finals to advance to the finals.
During the regular summer split Cloud 9 took down Liquid in both of their matches during week 5 and week 8. Giving C9 the recent head to head advantage.
Yet Liquid is firing on all cylinders with all of their players in top form. Four of their players made it into the first team NALCS for summer 2019. The lone player not too made the second team and that was jungler Xmithie.
Doublelift and CoreJJ were also both in in the top three for MVP of the split with CoreJJ coming in second.
Not to say C9 is going in unarmed. They do have the MVP of the split and the only other play on the first team in jungler Svenskeren. Nisqy and Licorice made the second team in the middle and top lane, while Zeyzal finished on the third all pro team in the support role.
Liquid has the stronger bottom lane. Doublelift and CoreJJ are te best duo in NA if not the best players in NA.
Top and middle are closer, but I do think Liquid has a slight edge there too. First teamers going up against second teamers should yield an advantage for the first teamers.
Jungle is a C9 advantage. You have the best jungler in NA doing his thing against the second best in NA.
While Liquid did fall to C9 in the regular split I see this being a different animal. I think Liquid is going to be coming in with the chip on their shoulder to finish first and not have the split be a bust.
C9 does have a chance though. If you can leverage your jungle advantage into lanes you can wins games. That and if you beat them before even as recent as three weeks ago why can’t you do it again.
Both teams should be giving it their all though. Even with no real penalty other than finishing as the second seed for worlds I don’t think this is a match both teams want to win.
I think it goes the full five games and goes 3-2 to Liquid. Giving them their forth split win in a row.
Who do you think wins this split? Check it out Sunday August 25, 2019 to find out.
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