In what ended up being a much tough series than anticipated, SK Telecom T1 came away with a commanding 2-0 sweep over the ROX Tigers in Seoul, South Korea to close out Day 3 of Week 4 in League of Legends Champions Korea on Thursday.
The ROX Tigers (1-6, 5-12 match record) tried valiantly to pick up the win against SKT in this first game, drafting a late-game focused team composition centered around AD carry Kwon "Sangyoon" Sang-yoon's Kog'Maw. Things certainly got off to a promising start when ROX got the first tower, but SKT took the first blood along with a couple more kills to grab an early lead. The lead ended up being one that SKT never relinquished, even in the face of some aggression from Sangyoon. SKT simply controlled all the late-game teamfights, as well as the major objectives to maintain a plus-10,000-gold lead for most of the latter half of the game. The high-pressure nature of the extreme late game seemed to get to ROX, as some poor engages gave SKT all the space it needed to eventually secure the 46-minute win. Leading the way in these pivotal fights was Bae "Bang" Jun-sik's Ashe, who finished with a stellar 8/1/10 KDA (kills/deaths/assists) to help close out the win.
ROX made a bit of a questionable decision in the drafting phase of Game 2, giving Blitzcrank to support Kim "Key" Han-gi and Lucian to mid laner Sun "Mickey" Yong-min, which allowed SKT (7-1, 14-4 match record) to dominate the early game. Not content to let SKT pick up the easy win, ROX struck back with a vengeance once the mid game hit. Key finally started landing hooks with his Blitzcrank, giving Mickey the chance to start picking off SKT members left and right. It even looked as though ROX might be able to bring it all the way back, but similar to Game 1, SKT was simply too strong. As the game progressed, Bang scaled into his full potential on Caitlyn, ending up with a 5/1/5 KDA and 44,951 damage done to champions. This gave SKT the necessary space in the late game to wrap up the 41-minute win.