NA’s Cloud9, Evil Geniuses and 100 Thieves have lost all nine of their matches in the Group Stage’s first round robin.
The first round robin matches of the Worlds 2022 Group Stage have come to a close today, and North America isn't looking so hot right now. The second half of today’s matches saw Royal Never Give Up win against 100 Thieves, Gen.G win against Flying Oyster and DRX score a victory over GAM Esports. With these wins, EDward Gaming now leads Group A at 2-1, JD Gaming leads Group B at 3-0, Rogue is on top of Group C at 3-0, and RNG tops Group D at 3-0.
Here are the full Group Stage standings as of today:
RNG cemented its dominance over Group D in the fourth match of the day, which saw the team go up against 100 Thieves. 100 Thieves has been struggling to gain a foothold in the Group Stage thus far, but we actually saw the team put up a pretty solid performance in this match - at least, until it was halfway through. A whole 17 minutes in, both teams were still on even ground with 100 Thieves maintaining a slight gold lead. Once a massive jungle skirmish went RNG’s way however, the team picked up a dragon and continued to dominate the rest of the match.
This is a pretty harsh loss for 100 Thieves and North America as a whole, as it means that NA has now gone 0-9 in the entirety of Worlds 2022 thus far. Even if the region manages to come back from this losing streak now, that doesn’t change that it shouldn’t have gone this far in the first place. The last time LCS teams went on a losing streak like this was in 2015, when the region’s teams went 0-11 in a dire tournament. Hopefully, that record stays unbroken for NA. The region can’t possibly go 0-18… right?
The fifth match of the day saw Gen.G Esports take on Flying Oyster. Gen.G wasted no time in this match, cracking the game open with a double kill against Shunn and Koala a few minutes in. Flying Oyster picked up a few kills here and there in the midgame, but Gen.G managed to coast ahead of the enemy team with a very slight gold lead. Gen.G couldn’t seem to capitalise on that early lead soon enough, so this became a pretty scrappy tug-of-war between both teams as one tried to one-up the other. Gen.G ended up taking a close win here, but this wasn’t the dominant performance most were expecting from the LCK team.
GAM Esports took on DRX in the final match of the day. This match started with an almost immediate skirmish, with DRX’s Zeka and Kingen diving onto Levi for First Blood and then taking out Kiaya and Kati for good measure. This was a disastrous start to the match for GAM, who for the most part decided to lay low for the early game and farm gold. The midgame didn’t go GAM’s way either, with DRX scoring more kills and picking up dragons, maintaining a comfortable tempo.
It didn’t take long for DRX’s Zeka to start dominating this match, scoring three kills in a row against GAM during a skirmish 17 minutes in. GAM was struggling to keep up at this point, but DRX already had more objectives, kills and gold, so the team was forced on defense. By the 22-minute mark, we saw DRX force GAM back into its base. Zeka scored a Triple Kill against GAM and DRX cleaned the rest of the team up, proceeding to clean up the enemy base with little opposition. DRX took the win.
The first round robin of Worlds 2022’s Group Stage is over, but there are plenty of matches left for us to look forward to. The tournament picks up again on October 14 to October 17 for the rest of the Group Stage, where we will see if NA manages to climb out of these losses to take down the top teams.
