Game 3 of SKT vs ROX brings an amazing surprise!
SKT’s new roster has changed up and today in game 1 versus the ROX Tigers, SKT started with top laner Untara, jungler Blank, mid laner Faker, AD carry Bang, and support Effort start. Both Untara and Effort are recent sign-ons for this season and both performed decently. Untara did give up first blood to ROX Lindarang, but SKT’s first kill went to Faker with a good performance from Blank. SKT took the win for game 1, with Bang really popping off and doing a tremendous amount of damage, by far the most across the map. Not the best overall performance for ROX Tigers, but they put up a fight and it took SKT 44 minutes to take the win. Bang, with a 93% kill participation, was named MVP of that game.
Game 2 brought some substitutions on the side of ROX Tigers. In game 1, they started with top laner Lindarang, jungler Mightybear, mid laner Kuzan, AD carry Sangyoonm and support Key. In game 2, ROX brought out Seonghwan to jungle and Lava to play the mid lane. Rox Tigers start out really ahead, dominating against SKT, waver slightly as SKT tries to make a comeback, but ultimately steal away the Baron and take the win against SKT. Lindarang really shined and managed to get 69% kill participation and pick up the title of MVP for game 2.
Game 3 brings the best surprise. SK substitutes Blank for WOLF!!!! Everyone’s favorite support (or at least, my favorite) is now substituting for Blank! Wolf is now playing his first professional game as a jungler on his 534th professional game. First game away from support! Everyone is a bit shocked, but there’s Wolf, sitting in the jungler’s seat. SKT decided to do this risky thing and have Wolf sub as jungler specifically for this game. Wolf does play jungle as his off role in solo queue, but there’s never been any public talk about him heading into the jungle. Faker gave an interview explaining that they specifically wanted Wolf to play against the ROX Tigers for this game. Wolf did end up giving up first blood on his Sejuani, trying to coordinate a gank with Faker that just was too aggressive and didn’t work out. He had his blue stolen away and I guess decided he wanted to be aggressive to pull off some damage with Sejuani, but Seonghwan was there and really messed up Wolf’s first gank and Wolf dies to Key’s Ornn. After Wolf’s early unfortunate incident, he really kept control over Seonghwan’s jungle and kept up excellent pressure top and gave the lane to SKT Untara’s Gnar over ROX Lindarang’s Jayce. SKT Bang’s Sivir managed to steal away mountain drake and at about 20 minutes SKT is dominating at 9 to 1 and about 10l gold up. “Autofill Master Wolf” is what the announcers are saying, but as much as they think it’s funny that Wolf is jungling, they also admit that he’s doing pretty well overall. On the bright side, as much as it’s surprising, Wolf appearing brought them a win to close out this match with a win for SKT in their first match in the LCK Spring Split.
Wolf went 3/1/9 on his first professional jungling game and got named MVP of game 3, so we got an interview with him to talk about this surprising decision, where both he and Bang shared that they felt it was a pretty solid performance for Wolf’s first time jungling on the team.
So far, LCK Spring Split outcomes from Day 1 and Day 2 (today’s SKT v ROX match is Day 2) are as follows:
All Best of 3
Day 1:
KING-ZONE DragonX vs KSV — Winner KSV
Kongdoo Monster vs MVP — Winner Kongdoo Monster
Day 2:
Afreeca Freecs vs kt Rolster – Winner Afreeca Freecs
SK telecom T1 vs ROX Tigers — Winner SK Telecom T1
Day 1 for the NA LCS is Saturday, January 20 starting at 5 p.m. and kicks off with a match of Team Liquid versus TSM.
Evenoh also posts about League and other geeky things on The Casual Geekery!