Invictus Gaming eliminated Team Liquid in the final match of the group stage on Sunday. Team Liquid was North America’s last hope at Worlds, and this will mark the first time since 2015 that a team from NA has not advanced past the group stage.
The game was seemingly over after the 10 minute mark, where iG held a 4-1 lead on TL.
In the end, Team Liquid were down nearly 10k gold compared to their opponents, and there really wasn’t anything they could do. Despite Jake “Xmithie” Puchero securing two early dragons, a comeback was just too steep for TL.
Invictus built a large lead from the get go, leading to multiple solo kills for Eui-jin “Rookie” Song. Eventually his roaming abilities added exponential pressure to the map, and Team Liquid’s lack of ward coverage put iG in perfect position to win. To simply put it: it was a short, sweet win for Invictus, and a sad 24-minute loss for TL.
Everything seemed to come tumbling down for Team Liquid after Rookie picked up his second kill in a roam to the Bottom Lane. From then on, iG kept their foot on TL’s necks and applied map-wide pressure. Jungler Zhen-Ning “Ning” Gao made sure Xmithie was behind, and eventually he secured multiple picks for his team.
Instead of working with what they were given, Team Liquid continued to look for risky plays. Their inability to capitalize on some of iG’s mistakes made it very difficult for them to get anything going. Poor scorelines reigned over the TL side of the scoreboard, whereas the members of Invictus were sitting high. Many hoped that 2019 would be the year of the west, but Europe’s momentum didn’t carry into North America.
Invictus Gaming’s win over Team Liquid clinched a quarterfinals berth, where they will meet Griffin.
Featured Image Courtesy of Riot Games.
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