SKT head coach Choi “cCarter” Byung-hoon commented on the comparatively larger head on support player Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan’s shoulders as of late.
With SKT set for a showdown against Longzhu Gaming in the finals of the League Champions Korea summer playoffs, cCarter and Wolf were invited on stage for Episode 20 of OGN’s “Weekly LCK,” where cCarter detailed the transformation of Wolf as a player.
“He’s gotten very over-confident as his solo queue points got better,” he said, smiling. “When he’s in the practice room, he used to play a little deflated. But now he plays with his chest puffed out.”
Wolf has indeed been showing a new persona as of late, entering into interviews with a bit of swagger not previously seen by the shy support player. As someone who expected to simply maintain a level of play in Master by his coach, Wolf previously said he expected his confidence would rise with his solo queue ranking.
“Since yesterday my solo queue games have been great,” he said. “I haven’t lost many games. Even if the team doesn’t do well, I do. I have had games we would win from behind, and I remember playing a ranked game with Faker, and he was doing really bad. I just told him that we could do it and make things happen. I was playing Rakan that game, and I thought ‘if I play Rakan (against KT Rolster), I’ll carry the game for sure,’ so I picked him today.”
SKT defeated KT Rolster in the semifinals Saturday to reach the championship. When asked which player on the team — other than himself — did well against KT, Wolf mentioned jungler Kang “Blank” Sun-gu without hesitation. Blank played the final three games of SKT’s reverse sweep win, effectively reading the movements of KT’s jungler Go “Score” Dong-bin. Wolf said Blank’s ability to do so is no joke, as Wolf has been on the receiving end of it during solo queue.
“I was very surprised Game 5 when he casually mentioned that he felt like the enemy jungler was at wolves, invaded and actually found Score there,” he said. “When I faced Blank as a jungler in solo queue, he did the exact same thing to me. I told the coach for three days afterward that he’s really crazy. How could he play the game like this? I didn’t have any of my jungle mobs that game.”
Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games