For most European League of Legends fans, the 2023 World Championship has ended in disappointment after all of the region’s representatives were eliminated from the competition this past weekend—including the LEC’s top seed, G2 Esports.
The talented roster dropped out of the tournament on Oct. 29 following a 2-1 series loss to China’s Bilibili Gaming but remained transparent as ever when it came to reflecting on what went wrong at the event. For example, G2’s League general manager Romain Bigeard showed the team’s full scrim schedule and results in a Twitter post today, including shocking records against BLG and the LCS’ No. 1 seed, NRG Esports.
Across all of the scrim blocks in Korea, the only teams that G2 had losing records against were Gen.G, T1, and Fnatic, while they had winning records against top LPL squads like JD Gaming, LNG Esports, and Weibo Gaming, according to Bigeard’s post. That’s an impressive feat to accomplish, but as seen by their early exit, good practice only matters if results follow.
In fact, G2 had overwhelmingly winning records in scrims against the final two teams they lost to, with the roster holding a 7-0 record vs. NRG and a collective 10-3 record vs. BLG through two sessions. On stage, however, they were dominated by the NA first seed in two lopsided games, while the BLG series was a bit closer—but still ended in G2’s loss.
G2’s sudden departure from Worlds was a stunner that took the League community by surprise, especially after hearing about the team’s preparation heading into the event.
“We crafted a really tryhard approach combining all our players and staff experiences, and we swore to give it all,” Romain said on social media. “We played 900+ scrims, countless solo queue [games], VODs, 1v1, 2v2, daily one-on-ones… we controlled our food, our sleep, the way we talk, we breathe, exercise, energize, how we recover, our offdays, gamedays, traveldays.”
Romain explained this was one of the toughest losses to take since G2 had really put their heart and soul into grinding out countless hours to create the perfect system for the squad.
Looking ahead, G2’s League division has plenty of decisions to make. From its next roster iteration to planning possible changes to its training system, this team will need to make some tough decisions before the start of the new year if they want to shed the memory of this lackluster finish in 2024.
Published: Oct 31, 2023 03:19 pm