SKT finally put an end to their slump by putting Ever 8 Winners to the sword.
It’s been a rough few weeks for the three time world champions, SK Telecom. By anyone else’s standards, they’ve done ok of late, but by their own, exceedingly high expectations, they have been slumping. Cue a match against the bottom team in the LCK, and SKT finally had a punching bag on which to take out their frustrations.
But for a brief, fleeting few minutes, Ever 8 Winners actually had a lead against them. In game one, Malarang’s Kha’zix took first blood in a bottom lane gank. Peanut evened things up, handing off a kill to Bang’s Tristana and it looked like normal SKT service was about to be resumed. But things stayed even for some time and turned in Ever 8’s favour for quite a while. Even the first skirmish, about 15 minutes in, ended with two kills apiece and eventually led to first tower gold in favour of the Winners. The bottom team in the league traded kills for towers but were unable to really grow their grow their gold lead more than a couple of thousand.
Then SKT things happened. 30 minutes in, they took a free, uncontested Baron and used it to take down middle inhibitor, opening up a 3k lead of their own. Soon after that, SKT took down their first enemy Nexus since coming home from Rift Rivals, making it look easy.
With that monkey off their back, SKT moved into game two with rediscovered confidence. It was they who made the early plays and they who were rewarded with first blood. SKT showed shades of their former selves, dominating the early game and not giving their opponents almost no room to breathe. Kills were scarce, but SKT suffocated Ever 8, constantly pressuring the jungle and stealing away the red buff. SKT secured an uncontested Baron buff before the 25 minute mark, despite all ten players being alive and the writing seemed to be on the wall.
Game one was messy, but eventually one-sided. Game two was one way traffic from start to finish. The kill lead was minimal, but SKT ended the game in under 30 minutes with a 13k gold lead and without conceding a single map objective.
Earlier in the day, MVP won the basement battle against BBQ Olivers. The teams remain 8th and 9th place respectively, within touching distance of last placed Ever 8. Longzhu Gaming top the table after a decisive win over ROX Tigers on Tuesday but they are tied with KT Rolster on 12-3. KT also played on Tuesday - a critical top of the table clash against Samsung Galaxy, which they narrowly won with a 2-1 score.
Image courtesy of Twitter.
