On the penultimate day of the LEC Spring Split’s initial stage, Fnatic earned total redemption from their gruesome Winter Split performance, clinching a spot in the Spring Split group stage with their fourth win of the split. Their win today over G2 Esports mathematically put them out of reach from Excel and Team Heretics, who sit on the brink of elimination heading into the final day of the first stage.
Although G2 dominated the early game in today’s contest, taking towers and dragons left and right throughout the first 20 minutes, Fnatic kept things bloody, quadrupling G2’s total kills at the 20-minute mark and eventually ended the game with a 23-15 advantage in total kills. Most of them went towards top laner Oscarinin, who easily had the best performance of his young LEC career today, posting a scoreline of 8/3/4 with Jax.
Fnatic struggled in the final stages of the game, failing twice to take down G2’s Nexus. The second attempt was highlighted by a double-teleport strategy that was barely fended off by G2 through a combination of focused damage and displacement abilities, including a textbook Emperor’s Divide from Caps. However, once FNC claimed a Baron buff along with two inhibitors, they were able to finally slam the door on G2, taking their Nexus following an elongated effort.
“We got kind of worried for a second with the whole Nexus thing at the end, but honestly a very satisfying game for us,” Rekkles said in a post-game interview on the LEC broadcast. “Oscar once again showing up big and honestly just a really good game. If you look aside from the Nexus stuff at the end, we had a really good game. So, happy for the guys, it feels great to have this kind of momentum coming into the next stage now. Really good all around.“
As a side note, this game was also the 500th of Rekkles’ LEC career. In a showing of subtle poetry, Rekkles played Sivir, a champion he’s played more than any other in his career, according to League stats site Games of Legends. Rekkles finished his 500th career game today with a cherry-on-top triple kill at G2’s Nexus to secure the game for Fnatic.
Fnatic will play their final game of the LEC Spring Split’s first stage tomorrow against Astralis. The second through seventh seeds for the league’s group stage are currently separated by just one game, meaning that Fnatic could move as high as second place should they win tomorrow’s single round-robin finale.
Published: Mar 26, 2023 04:27 pm