100 Thieves barely come away with a win over Clutch

In one of the longest games of the NA LCS so far this split, 100 Thieves managed to end a 50-minute game over Clutch Gaming that should’ve been over at least 20 minutes sooner.

100T ran one of this split’s patented gold funnel team comps with Cody Sun and Zaqueri “Aphromoo” Black on Xayah and Rakan in the mid lane, William “Meteos” Hartman and Yoo “Ryu” Sang-wook as Tahm Kench and Morgana in the bot lane, and Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho up top with Jax. As far as team comps go, this was about as 2018 Summer Split as you can get.

Everything started out according to plan for 100T. Cody Sun commanded a massive gold lead in the mid lane and accumulated a couple of kills by the time the mid-game rolled around. For gold funnel strats, that’s exactly what you want to happen on the team’s featured carry.

Not only was Cody very comfortable with his gold situation, but 100T was also controlling the map. They forced fights on their terms, and although they dropped a death or two in some of the bigger ones, the pace of the game was almost entirely up to them—until the Baron.

One of the bigger issues about gold funneling comps is that players who don’t normally jungle are the designated Smite users on the team. They need to take Smite to vacate the mid lane and clear jungle camps before returning to farm minions. This means that players without the necessary experience are suddenly required to out-Smite other junglers for major objectives. We’re sure you can tell where this is going, but this means everything started to collapse around the Baron fight.

100T were trying to secure the Baron, and for all intents and purposes, they set the play up very, very well. But, as previously mentioned, Cody Sun isn’t used to playing with Smite, and he… well, he forgot to use it entirely. Nickolas “Hakuho” Surgent, Clutch’s support, walked up behind the pit, cast a Zyra ultimate, and stole it away. And just like that, Clutch were back in the game. They would’ve ended it right there, too, if not for Ssumday and those meddling Jax mechanics.

Eventually, 100T clawed their way back into the game and won after 50 long minutes. While it’s great for 100T that they won the game, it’s a big red flag that one missed Baron threw them off course as much as it did.

If they want to make it through to the finals at the end of the split once again, they’re going to need to hammer out some of those dents—including avoiding the tilt factor when leads slip away, as well as how to get an early lead to begin with, which is usually their issue.

100T’s next game is tomorrow against OpTic Gaming.