After five days of furious play at the 2021 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational’s rumble stage, North America’s representative Cloud9 have officially been eliminated from the tournament after failing to win enough games to stay in the top four.
C9 will drop out early despite some of their great performances throughout the tournament. First, the team took a win off of Korea’s DWG KIA while also winning three in a row to finish the group stage. It was a great sign for NA fans who were worried about the team’s form.
But the LCS champions stumbled over and over in the beginning of the rumble stage. From a heartbreaking backdoor loss to simply getting outplayed from the first minute, the team couldn’t seem to find much momentum from the wins they did manage to find. In fact, one of the most disappointing moments of the tournament for NA fans came from C9 picking up a dominant win against RNG yesterday only to lose to PGG on the same day.
That same loss against PGG ended up costing C9 a possible chance at a tiebreaker match against MAD Lions for the fourth and final spot in the knockout stage, which was ultimately snatched away when the European champions took down RNG in today’s third match.
Looking at their games, however, there were several large pitfalls that C9 struggled with. They had a -722 average gold difference at 15 minutes, according to Oracle’s Elixir, which means that they constantly fell behind in the early game. They were also in the bottom five in stats for first blood rate, first tower rate, Rift Herald control rate, and Baron control rate.
Ultimately, it was C9’s lack of consistency that cost them the chance to fight for an MSI title. Now, the team will have to go back to the drawing board to prepare for the 2021 LCS Summer Split, where they’ll aim to qualify for the World Championship in October.
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