SKT's shocking slump continued with a defeat at the hands of Longzhu Gaming. Samsung continue to set the pace at the top of the league.
In an almost unprecedented run of bad form, SK Telecom lost their fourth match in a row today at the hands of Longzhu Gaming. Coming off the back of a shocking defeat to Jin Air, Longzhu looked like a tough task for SKT and so it proved. Cuzz’s Gragas started the ball rolling with a successful early bottom lane gank and the first skirmish, about 10 minutes later, went 2-1 in favour of LZ. Kills continued to be traded, and SKT took a 4-3 lead in that regard, but was still down in gold with zero tower kills. First tower eventually went to LZ, but was traded back immediately and the gold lead stayed below 1500 gold for a long time. 26 minutes was the turning point, as LZ took four kills around the Infernal Drake and turned it into a Baron and the first sizeable gold lead of the game. LZ went 4-0 in another team fight just as the buff wore off, leaving Wolf’s Zyra alone and unable to stave off the assault.
Longzhu started game two in a similar fashion. A tower dive in the top lane got two kills for Khan’z Camille, with Peanut’s Elise only able to clean up one in return. Cuzz’s Gragas stayed active, securing another kill in the bottom lane and one in mid lane within the space of a few minutes. Just like in game one, the teams were almost dead even for quite some time, but when Lonzhu picked up the first tower of the game, SKT were unable to answer and LZ followed it up with a mid lane tower a few minutes later. Now they had a 2k gold lead as The Baron spawned, but it was the top lane tower they had their sights on. Faker died trying to defend it and now LZ were really accelerating their advantage. Another overstep from Faker gifted LZ three kills for zero, a Baron buff and a 10k gold lead. Victory seemed inevitable from that position, and so it was. LZ claimed game two in under 30 minutes, dominating the current world champions.
Samsung Galaxy maintained their lead at the top of the table after a win over BBQ Olivers. Game one was a run of the mill victory for Samsung, with a slow and steady start snowballing out of BBQ’s control. Game two started more evenly but ended much the same as game one, with Samsung’s victory seeming inevitable from the first team fight. They move onto an 11-2 record with playoffs fast approaching.
Image courtesy of Samsung Twitter.
