Tim Sevenhuysen is the founder and sole developer of Oracle's Elixir and provides a variety of consulting and contracting services throughout the esports industry. He is the former Director of Esports Analytics for 100 Thieves, served as Head of Data Science for Esports One, led Shadow.gg from 2017 to 2019, and was Statistical Consultant for Fnatic in 2015. Follow Tim on Twitter at @TimSevenhuysen.
The main storyline of this series is Cloud9’s fall from grace and sub-.500 record in the second half of the regular season. FlyQuest are worth talking about, but the conversation is mostly about C9 and their ability to recapture their Spring championship form. Every opinion about this series is going to spring directly out of assessments of why C9 fell off, and whether that was a sign of real problems, or just a temporary blip.
Typically you’d expect to have a clear favourite when one of the teams was seeded directly into the Lower Bracket, but 100 Thieves mopped up EG pretty convincingly in the teams’ last meeting, and the head-to-head role matchups stack up quite well for 100T. Both teams are top side-heavy, with relatively quiet contributions from the mid and bot lanes.
With such similar profiles on paper, preparation and coaching could make the real difference.
I didn’t expect TSM to fall into the Lower Bracket right off the bat, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Dignitas probably didn’t expect that, either. Now we’re going to see two of the oldest orgs in North American LoL fighting for a chance to reach the next stage of the Lower Bracket.
For TSM, this is a chance to redeem themselves for an incredibly disappointing showing against the Golden Guardians. For Dignitas, it’s a chance to embrace the underdog role and win back some respect from a community that has set such low expectations for them all year long, myself included.
