Team Liquid reminded everyone today why they should be in the conversation for best League of Legends team in North America after sweeping aside FlyQuest 2-0 in the 2021 LCS Lock In tournament quarterfinals.
Cloud9 and TSM understandably stole nearly every headline this past offseason by signing Perkz and SwordArt, respectively. But Liquid snagged one of the best top laners in the LEC from Astralis/Origen in Alphari.
And if the region didn’t appreciate the strength of his play, they certainly do now.
Liquid were notorious for their slow style of play in 2020, but you might not know it given how they’ve played this season—especially against FlyQuest. Support CoreJJ has always been a roamer, and between him and jungler Santorin, Liquid have turned themselves into a team that makes plays all over the map, seemingly at all times, on the back of this two-man death squad.
Despite how well Liquid’s former top laner Impact has been playing for Evil Geniuses, Alphari’s play in the Lock In tournament on carries has given his team another dimension, further contributing to their decisive, lethal early games.
FlyQuest top laner Licorice is one of the best in his position in the LCS. And Alphari allowed him to look the part for about nine minutes in game one. Licorice had built up a 25-CS lead and had his opponent locked under tower for the whole game. After he and jungler Brandon Joel “Josedeodo” Villegas were punished for an overstay early on, however, Alphari unlocked on Kennen and shut Licorice out of the game completely.
Liquid did have an extremely sloppy stretch in game one after amassing an 8,000-gold lead at 18 minutes, which FlyQuest, to their credit, played decisively and cohesively through and almost cobbled together what would have been the biggest comeback of the year.
Game two was a lot closer, and with little hard crowd control to go against Tactical’s Samira, that’s exactly what Liquid played around en route to a much cleaner, if slightly less dominant, victory.
For FlyQuest, headline signing Josedeodo continued a good run of form despite the losses. His Udyr in game one was only limited by the champion itself, rather than the player behind it.
Rookie mid laner Cristian “Palafox” Palafox had a good series as well, staying even in farm with Jensen and preventing him from roaming as much as he might like on Orianna in game two. Their bottom lane of Johnson “Johnsun” Nguyen and David “Diamond” Bérubé had a forgettable second game but held their own and even became the team’s primary win condition in game one with Johnsun on Seraphine despite going up against arguably the best bottom lane in the region.
The 2021 LCS Lock In tournament shifts to best-of-fives starting next weekend with the semifinals. On Jan. 29, 100 Thieves take on Cloud9 at 5pm CT, and Evil Geniuses play Liquid the following day at 1pm CT. The finals will take place the day after at 1pm CT to end the weekend and the tournament.
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