Licorice ends loss streak to Cloud9 with Golden Guardians’ first victory in 2022 LCS Summer Split

Licorice led the Golden Guardians to a convincing victory over C9 on the second day of the 2022 LCS Spring Split, bouncing back from the team’s loss to FlyQuest yesterday.

The veteran top laner, bringing out Kayle in her first appearance of the LCS Summer Split, successfully broke a 0-13 streak against his former team, with C9 still being unable to start their intended roster. This marks the second consecutive loss for C9, who are still trying to find their footing without Berserker and Zven in their lineup.

After losing an early-game trade in the bot lane, C9 focused their attention to the mid lane, where they hoped to once again make Jensen their win condition. Unfortunately for the mid laner, the Yone matchup into LeBlanc made it difficult for him to hit nearly any of his dashes or ultimates. If he did, he was just met with immense damage from Ablazeolive, which Blaber could not quickly respond to from the jungle.

In the top lane, Licorice opted to bring Kayle to the Rift, a champion that has been increasingly valuable in professional play around the world thanks to recent durability changes. As the game continued, he slowly became one of the biggest threats on Golden Guardians. The damage between him and Stixxay’s Aphelios gave Golden Guardians the Baron at just 21 minutes, which began what would be a triumphant march to victory for the team.

A second Baron and near-uncontested push down the mid lane earned Golden Guardians the opportunity to destroy C9’s nexus, as well as any players attempting to defend it. Thanks to his scaling on Kayle, Licorice emerged as the player of the game with a 2/0/4 KDA and 85.7 percent kill participation. 

In the post-game interview with LeTigress, Licorice noted that he’s looking forward to playing against the full C9 roster later in the split, where he can fully redeem himself for the 13-game loss streak against his former squad, despite the win on Saturday. It is currently unclear when C9 will be able to field their full-strength roster, consisting of Berserker as their ADC and Zven as support.

Golden Guardians move up in the standings with this victory, and will look to finish the weekend positively with another win tomorrow against CLG. C9 will end the first weekend of the Summer Split in a highly-anticipated match against Team Liquid.