Academy Standouts: 2021 Summer, Week 3

Academy Standouts highlights the players who performed best in the most recent week of NA Academy play. I’ll discuss a few of the most noteworthy standouts, then list some other players whose performances caught my eye below.

ry0ma, Mid, 100 Thieves Academy

With the amount of time the 100 Thieves Academy mid laner spent in the river and side lanes in the early game this week, it’s obvious that he’s making a very intentional effort to become a more map-mobile player. Roamin’ ry0ma’s Lee Sin created all kinds of action and took control of games, in ways that I haven’t been used to seeing from him. He also played Tristana and Syndra, using the latter to counter Triple’s Lucian in lane and showing his flexibility between different champion archetypes.

ry0ma Stats

	KDA	KP	GXD10	DPM	CSPM
Week 3	7.3	66.7%	+101	633	8.9
Overall	6.5	67.8%	+30	531	8.0

You have to love seeing a player grow and expand their comfort zone. More please, Tommy!

Isles, Support, Cloud9 Academy

Another week, another strong showing from C9A’s Support, who is starting to cement his claim as the best Support playing in Academy right now. He played Thresh, Alistar, and two games of Nautilus, making strong plays in lane to help set Zven up for success and engaging team fights well, too.

The Zven/Isles duo lane is looking very scary, and C9A look like the team to beat this split, for sure.

Isles Stats

	KDA	KP	DTH%	WPM	WCPM
Week 3	11.8	68.1%	11.1%	1.42	0.24
Overall	8.8	65.3%	13.9%	1.39	0.27

Zven, Bot, Cloud9 Academy

Every week, Zven is showing a little more clearly what it’s like when one of the better players in the LCS descends to Academy and still puts in the same level of effort and seriousness as he did on the main team. I don’t think we’ve seen someone outclass the league this obviously since Ssumday in 2019.

There are some good bot laners in Academy this year, but they aren’t on Zven’s level.

Zven Stats

	KDA	KP	GXD10	DPM	CSPM
Week 3	22.0	63.8%	+828	553	10.5
Overall	10.5	63.0%	+186	529	9.6

Additional Standouts

The following players also stood out.

• Copy, Mid, Cloud9 Academy
  • More resilience and mid/late-game influence from Copy, who got pushed around in lane a bit both on his Sett and in a game of Syndra vs. Lulu but was still able to tank out team fights and provide good playmaking. We’ll hopefully get to see him match this performance off of Sett more soon.
• Darshan, Top, Cloud9 Academy
  • Darshan full 1v5 pentakilled Immortals Academy. Literally. All solo kills. Great week of Lee Sin play; not sure why no one banned it or picked it away from him in either series.
• Hauntzer, Top, TSM Academy
  • In Spring, Hauntzer often dominated the laning phase but then made some boneheaded plays in mid and late game to undercut his own performance. So far this summer, he’s been throwing less and team fighting better.
• Kumo, Top, FlyQuest Academy
  • This week we got to see some vintage Kumo, the kind of play that earned him a few games on Cloud9’s LCS team back in 2019. It was a very welcome reappearance. If he can keep up that level he can definitely become a player to watch once again.
• Luger, Bot, 100 Thieves Academy
  • Good player is good. He had one “off” game on Kalista in a loss to FLY Academy, but shone in the other three games on Kai’sa, Varus, and Jinx.
• Prismal, Bot, Golden Guardians Academy
  • Prismal played three games of Ziggs and only won one of them, and his Kalista in the other game came in a loss to TL Academy, but Prismal shone individually in three of the four games and just couldn’t quite get his team across the finish line. Don’t judge him by his team’s results.
• Takeover, Mid, TSM Academy
  • TSMA’s new Mid has finally arrived and he wasted no time in making a statement on an assortment of melee mids (he played Yone, Sylas, Akali, and Sett). If he shows a similar level of proficiency in other styles, he’s going to be one of the best mids in the league.

Photos courtesy lolesports.com