New North American League of Legends champions have officially been crowned. By sweeping the reigning LCS champions 100 Thieves in the 2022 LCS Spring Finals, Evil Geniuses have successfully earned their first LCS championship title today—complete with a banner to be hung in the LCS Studio.
Despite qualifying for the Spring Playoffs through the lower bracket, EG achieved a miracle run against some of the most talented rosters in LCS history, gaining hold of the organization’s first LCS championship. By once again recognizing their strengths, the EG squad stopped 100T from building even smallest lead, earning EG a spot at MSI as the LCS representatives.
Following yesterday’s dominant victory over former multi-time champions Team Liquid, EG ran straight into the LCS Spring Finals with the world standing behind them. To take the trophy, however, they would have to get past the reigning champions 100 Thieves, who similarly triumphed through their playoffs run without dropping a single game after ending the regular season in third.
Chants for EG’s young ADC Danny echoed around NRG Stadium before, during, and after each game, acknowledging how excited fans were to see another accolade possibly added to Danny’s short career. These cheers seemed to resonate closely with Danny from the first minutes of the series, maintaining his status as a win condition EG could continue to rely on.
Whenever a kill was in EG’s sights, they immediately called Danny over, giving him a gold lead of over 3,000 over his lane opponent, FBI, in game one. Fortunately for EG’s ADC, his teammates kept the entirety of 100T busy in the top lane, allowing him to get solo gold on both bot lane turrets as Jinx, ultimately racking up items that nullified any of 100T’s advances.
100T removed Jinx from game two completely, hoping to prevent Danny from carrying with the champion for yet another game. Unfortunately for the reigning champions, their tunnel vision on Danny took their attention away from the other members of EG there to burst them down at any point.
As Mordekaiser, Impact constantly took Huhi out of fights, making room for Inspired to jump into the remaining 100T members and trap them with a Jarvan IV ultimate. Within 25 minutes, 100T could only grab two kills on the EG squad, dropping all of their towers and Nexus to a team that had never before been to a playoffs finals.
100T’s grind back from an 0-2 deficit began with an aggressive early game in the third bout of the series. Team fights in the bot lane gave 100T a small lead over EG in both gold and kills, but overzealousness at the first Rift Herald—complete with a steal from Inspired—put the reigning champions in a rough spot.
One final teamfight at the Baron forced 100T to throw all they had at EG as a last resort. Though Abbedagge served as a great initiator for 100T, the sheer burst damage shared between Jojopyun and Danny was incomparable to any damage they could respond with—and almost handed Danny another pentakill in the process. In the fastest LCS finals of all time, Evil Geniuses can now call themselves the LCS champions.
Evil Geniuses have swept through every team in their lower bracket run bar one loss to FlyQuest at the start of playoffs. Jojopyun, in his rookie split at 17 years old, is the youngest player in the LCS to ever hold the trophy. Danny, at 18 years old, joins his mid lane teammate in capturing the attention of League fans from around the world, setting the standard for the future of NA talent.
EG’s next step is MSI 2022, where they’ll begin their journey in group C of the group stage. G2 Esports and the LCO’s representative, ORDER, will be their opponents in their first visit to an international League stage. Impact, Inspired, and Vulcan have made it to international stages in the past and serve as the veteran players aimed at leading the younger talent into the fight against the rest of the world.
MSI 2022 will take place in Busan, South Korea, and officially begins on May 10.
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