Golden Guardians Are Red-Hot In The LCS
If Golden Guardians weren’t on your radar as a top contender within the LCS when the 2023 Spring Split began, they most certainly better be now. Golden Guardians have extended their historic sweep of the LCS to seven victories after easily defeating Evil Geniuses, last year’s Spring winners. The current winning run is still the longest in the organization’s history and is almost as long as FlyQuest’s eight-game winning streak from the first half of the split.
Reaching this stage after many failures felt very fulfilling, but Stixxay said that this is just the start of what he expects from himself for the rest of this year during his “player of the week” interview with Emily Rand.
I don’t want people to think, “Oh wonderful, we got Golden Guardians in the Playoffs, we can beat them,” said Stixxay of the Golden Guardians. “I just want to participate internationally once more,” added the ADC.
Notably, Golden Guardians made only a few adjustments to its LCS lineup before the start of the Spring Split. Gori made his LCS debut, Huhi came from 100 Thieves, Licorice and River returned in their respective positions, Stixxay was promoted back to the main squad, and Gori made his LCS debut. But in a short period of time, this squad has developed the chemistry required to defeat virtually the entire league, including groups that were expected to hold the top spots in the standings.
Team Liquid Summit Needs To Keep Dominating Top
It’s not absurd to assume that Summit may achieve much higher heights on Liquid in 2023 given his individual domination seen on C9, potential learnings from his support and jungler, and a team that communicated in his native tongue.
That, however, could not be further from the truth after 11 games in the Spring Split. As of now, he’s been performing similarly as he did back when he played for C9. Summit outperformed all top laners in the 2022 LCS Spring Split in terms of damage per minute, damage per minute per team, XPD, CSD, and GD at 15 minutes.
Now, in the 2023 LCS Spring Split, Summit is still in the lead among all top laners in all three “at 15 minutes” stats. He is also in the lead for DPM at 577 and is second in team damage percentage at 24.4%, only behind Dignitas’ top laner Armut.
The widespread consensus was that C9, Liquid, and FlyQuest, another North American team that changed its strategy to focus on a core of South Korean players, would contend for the crown while EG and 100 Thieves took some time to gel and rise to the top of the standings. FlyQuest is currently alone in first place in the standings and has not dropped a game.
On the other hand, Liquid is still trying to figure itself out. Summit obviously has to make some changes, but Yeon’s first LCS season has been at best uneventful, and Haeri hasn’t adjusted to the new level of competition as quickly as EG’s jojopyun did last season.
Team Liquid vs Golden Guardians Match Information
- Match: Team Liquid vs Golden Guardians
- Date: Thursday, March 2nd
- Time: 8:00 pm ET
- Team Liquid vs Golden Guardians Live Stream: Twitch.tv
Team Liquid vs Golden Guardians Picks and Prediction
There were few who predicted Golden Guardians to be a top-five team when the 2023 LCS Spring Split started. Nonetheless, the team has already won seven games in a row, including victories over some of the league’s top teams, six weeks into the regular season.
The league’s best in average gold differential at 15 minutes, first tower rate, plates per game, dragon control rate, and baron control rate are among the team-based stats they have dominated. They also have a 3.14 KDA and only 35 team deaths, which is 29 fewer than Cloud9, who are in second place with 64 deaths.
Golden Guardians’ 2023 campaign has reached a pinnacle thanks to victories over Cloud9, Evil Geniuses, and 100 Thieves, which demonstrate that they are more than just a passing fad. When they face Team Liquid and Immortals, they will now attempt to make it nine in a row.
I don’t think that Team Liquid is ready just yet to take on a Golden Guardians team that currently looks unstoppable. Unless something extremely crazy happens in the top lane, I expect GG to take this one home.
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