SK Telecom T1 Dominates Royal Never Give Up in Quarterfinals
SK Telecom T1 put in an outstanding performance to defeat Royal Never Give Up in a 3-1 win during Friday’s quarterfinals series. Despite the fact that RNG has some of the most skilled individual players in the world, SKT T1’s exceptional macro play ultimately secured their victory.
However, the defending champions didn’t have an easy time, as RNG took the first game of the series with a highly disciplined early game. They racked up kills and turrets to create a 4k gold lead, and it wasn’t until 27 minutes into the game that SKT T1 found a kill.
Despite their early lead, it took RNG over 46 minutes to secure the Nexus. SKT T1 almost managed to turn the game around, and they might have won if not for a series of questionable mistakes by SKT T1’s top laner Hoseong “Duke” Lee, who consistently gave up solo kills and made teleportation errors.
The rest of the series belonged to SKT T1. They secured first blood just a few minutes into the second game and maintained their momentum throughout.
SKT T1’s bot lane, consisting of AD carry Junsik “Bang” Bae and support Jaewan “Wolf” Lee, demonstrated their expertise by going head-to-head with their ultra-aggressive counterparts, Jian “Uzi” Zi-Hao and Sehyeong “Mata” Cho.
As always, SKT T1’s success relied heavily on their legendary mid laner Sanghyeok “Faker” Lee, who has proven throughout this tournament that he is still the best player in the world. Faker had an impressive score of 16/6/17 in SKT T1’s three wins.
“In the first game, my hands were still cold, and I don’t think I fully warmed up,” Faker said in a post-game interview on Riot’s broadcast.
SKT T1 is the second team to advance to the semifinals, following Samsung Galaxy, another team from Korea, who swept North America’s Cloud9 last night.
Korea aims for a trifecta on Saturday as the top seed, ROX Tigers, go head-to-head with China’s EDward Gaming. On Sunday, Europe’s H2K will face the surprising and entertaining wildcard team, Albus NoX Luna, to conclude the quarterfinals before the tournament moves to New York City for the semifinals next weekend.
keywords: SK Telecom T1, Royal Never Give Up, esports, League of Legends, World Championships, semifinals, Korea, China, Europe, ROX Tigers, EDward Gaming, H2K, Albus NoX Luna