SK Telecom T1 successfully played spoiler for KT Rolster with Thursday’s 2-1 win to confirm KT’s second place finish in the League Champions Korea summer split.
The much-anticipated rematch of the “Telecom Wars” ended with another SKT victory, and the reigning world champions have now swept the regular season against KT in both splits. After the match, the entire roster was invited to the post-match interview with OGN casters Lee “CloudTemplar” Hyun-woo and Kim “Dangun” Eui-joong. The first question was for Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, who said that he thought his team had a better chance at victory.
“I didn’t think we were at a disadvantage,” he said. “If anything I thought we would be more mentally relaxed than them, giving us a better chance at winning.”
Faker was referencing the fact that SKT was going to start at the bottom of the playoff bracket either way, while KT needed to win against SKT in order to win the regular season. Presumably there was a lot more pressure on KT to win compared to SKT because KT had more on the line.
Faker also played two games of the match using skins, which goes against his usual policy of using no skins. Faker explained that it wasn’t out of choice, but more because of a bug.
“There isn’t any change on my part,” he said. “I think there’s a bug in the client. I choose the default skin but it starts me off with different skins. We won all of the games where I did use skins, so (I think it worked out).”
Game 1’s success also put Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon front and center, as he was literally eating the competition as Cho’Gath. Although he didn’t play Cho’Gath onstage before, he still managed to be a consistent threat in the lane, leading his team to victory.
Game 2 painted a different picture, though, as he was heavily camped and died many times. One of the eternal questions in cases like that is “Is it the laner’s fault or the jungler’s?” Huni was quick to take the fall for this one.
“Honestly saying for today’s game, I think I can say the jungler didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Communication between the top-jungle is important but it didn’t happen, and that’s my fault because laners are supposed to look at the lane and relay information. It’s more of my fault.”
“It’s the both of our faults,” Han “Peanut” Wan-ho added. “Looking back, the junglers and top laners (for our team) never really had good communication, so I thought that we would lose to KT at some point because of it. Thankfully it happened early on so I think we can work on it better now.”
AD Carry Bae “Bang” Jun-sik seemed to keep a lane death in Game 2 in his mind, as well as the bottom lane’s comparative poor performance during that game. When the clip of him dying to Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu was shown, Bang explained that the team likes to discuss how things might have been different when they watch clips like that, and the team did look like they were discussing it on stage. Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan, however, almost burst out in laughter and added a caveat.
“The funny thing is, the person who died (in the moment) doesn’t accept it,” he said, laughing. “They tend to say ‘No I would have lived if it worked out.'”
Wolf is interesting because he was the sole player who wrote out how the team felt during its four match losing streak earlier in the split. He promised followers he would practice harder, and he did good on his promise, as he steadily climbed the ladder by playing almost exclusively Alistar, a champion that he used twice against KT.
“When the losing streak began, the whole team had the same mindset,” he said. “We usually close the practice room at four (in the morning), but everyone stayed longer, missing sleep in the process. Getting maybe five, six, seven hours of sleep. I thought that today’s games will go well since we were able to practice our hearts out.”
Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games