Evil Geniuses have ended Cloud9's post-season run in a clean sweep in the penultimate lower bracket match of the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs. While C9 heads home, EG will move on to face Team Liquid in the final match of the lower bracket to see who meets 100 Thieves in the finals.
Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses had relatively similar post-season trajectories, albeit with different expectations attached. As the 4th post-season seed, Evil Geniuses was expected to lose against 1st seed Team Liquid in their first match of the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs, and while they did, the fight they put up forced the series to go the distance before TL triumphed.
C9, on the other hand, came into their first match as the 2nd seed favored against 3rd seed 100 Thieves before getting absolutely shellacked by the defending LCS champions in a clean sweep. C9 and EG both of their lower bracket matches in a 3-0 win over 6th seed Golden Guardians and a 3-1 over 5th seed FlyQuest, respectively, which resulted in both teams meeting against one another with a top 3 finish alongside Team Liquid and 100 Thieves on the line.
Evil Geniuses started the series by exploiting Cloud9 top laner Park "Summit" Woo-tae in a similar way to 100 Thieves earlier in the LCS Spring Playoffs, but the crucial difference in the series, whether in the case of the top lane or not, was the superior jungle/mid play by Kacper "Inspired" Słoma and Joseph "jojopyun" Joon Pyun over Robert "Blaber" Huang and Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami. Additionally, EG AD carry Kyle "Danny" Sakamaki had a transcendent performance on Zeri in all 3 games.
After lasting one round longer than Golden Guardians and FlyQuest, Cloud9 will have to settle for 4th place in the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs. Evil Geniuses will travel to NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas to try and take on Team Liquid for a spot in the finals against 100 Thieves one week from today.
