Cloud9 continue their EMENES hotstreak
As the LCS 2023 Spring Split comes to an end, the race for final placements in the regular season standings has continued to grow in intensity.
For Cloud9, they came into today’s series against Team Liquid looking to maintain their close race with FlyQuest atop the standings.
However, their series against Team Liquid wouldn’t be so easy for the fired-up Cloud9 squad. Team Liquid entered today’s series against Cloud9 off of one of their most impressive wins of the split against FlyQuest yesterday. After Team Liquid jungler Hong “Pyosik” Chang-hyeon's dominance on Lee Sin, Team Liquid drafted that jungle pick for the former World Champion as they looked to deliver another upset on the LCS stage.
Unfortunately, Pyosik’s early pathing towards the bottom side of the map was completely negated by Cloud9 jungler Robert “Blaber” Huang’s Viego. Throughout the early stages of the game, Blaber’s Viego was a constant presence towering over the bottom lane, which led to the early lead going to Cloud9. This ultimately led to Cloud9 marching into Team Liquid’s base as they cemented their fifth consecutive win with midlaner Jang “EMENES” Min-soo.
With this win, Cloud9 has maintained its tie with FlyQuest for first place in the LCS 2023 Spring Split standings. Now at 12 wins, both Cloud9 and FlyQuest will have an opportunity to grab sole possession of first place as both teams face off in the opening match of week 8.
As for Team Liquid, this loss puts them at 6-9 and in a tough spot to reach the LCS 2023 Spring Split playoffs following 100 Thieves' 2-0 week. Regardless, Team Liquid is not too far behind the pack of teams fighting for those final spots in the LCS 2023 Spring playoffs. They will face off against Dignitas, CLG, and Evil Geniuses next week, where they will likely need to win all three games in order to make playoffs.
It will be interesting to see if they can piece together a stellar week to close out the regular season.
Sage got his start in esports as a volunteer writer in 2016 for esports organization, Dignitas. Since then, he has continued to work on his craft as a journalist and reporter for a number of established esports publications, such as esports.gg, Unikrn, Akshon Esports, Howla, The Player’s Lobby, Nerd Street Gamers, and most recently Dot Esports. Now, as a member of Esports Illustrated’s content team, Sage’s primary duties are centered around creating groundbreaking written and video content about the esports industry that impacts the community in a meaningful way. Sage graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and Informatics. There, he was a member of the Rutgers Esports Executive Board, both as the head of the fighting game community and a videographer/photographer for the Content team.