Three teams remain in the battle for the LCS Summer 2020 title. On Saturday, TSM and Team Liquid will play for a spot in the Final against FlyQuest on Sunday.
Since the schedule is so tight for the last two matches, I’m going to do something a little different with this preview and cover everything in one piece. First I’ll break down my expectations for TSM vs. TL, and then I’ll spend some time discussing FlyQuest and how they’ll need to prepare and play against either opponent.
The TSM vs. TL preview starts immediately below, but you can also jump straight to the FlyQuest section if that’s what you’re most interested in.
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.
I had very high hopes for Evil Geniuses coming into the summer split, after they outperformed most analysts’ expectations in Spring. I even power-ranked them second, because I believed they could hold onto their form and improve enough to survive the pushes I expected from TSM and Team Liquid. Meanwhile, I thought FlyQuest had overachieved in the Spring playoffs by reaching the Finals, and that their true form was closer to the middle of the pack.
I was wrong about EG, and while I’m not convinced I’m wrong about FlyQuest yet, I think this series is going to make FlyQuest look like a Finals contender again.
