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.
Watch Tim’s pick for Game of the Week
Busio, Support, 100 Thieves Academy
If you talk to people inside the 100 Thieves org, they’ll proclaim Busio as the saviour of the NA Support talent pool. In his first week in Academy, he looked like it, especially in the series against CLG Academy where he absolutely popped off on Thresh and followed it up with a Tahm Kench game where he seemed to connect his knockup on every W he used. If Busio can play this well for even 50% of his games this year, he’s going to become everything 100 Thieves say he is.
Chime, Support, Golden Guardians Academy
Another support put together just as good a week of work. GGA got a great showing out of Chime, who made strong roams to mid to pair with Iconic, received ganks well, and paired his Rakan engages with ry0ma’s Corki Packages to set up team fights. The Chime/Stixxay bot lane pairing has been coming along, but we’ll have to see what happens once Violet is eventually able to step in and complete the roster.
Dhokla, Top, CLG Academy
A second strong week in a row put Dhokla front and centre for CLG Academy despite dropping the series against 100 Thieves Academy. He played a dominating champion pool of Renekton, Graves, Gnar, and Akshan, and performed very well in laning, team fights, and map plays. CLGA should be contenders this year, and Dhokla is proving that he’s a big reason why.
Additional Standouts
The following players also stood out.
- eXyu, Jungle, Dignitas Academy
- Haeri, Mid, Team Liquid Academy
- Kaori, Bot, Evil Geniuses Academy
- Kenvi, Jungle, 100 Thieves Academy
- Pretty, Mid, Immortals Academy
- RoseThorn, Jungle, CLG Academy
- Takeover, Mid, TSM Academy
Photos courtesy lolesports.com