The bottom of the 2018 Spring Split standings featured three teams that have, in the past weeks, become playoff contenders for the Summer Split in Counter Logic Gaming, FlyQuest and Golden Guardians. Stats & Information looks at what has given them recent success.
Golden Guardians
The Golden Guardians picked up their first ever 2-0 week against the likes of Clutch Gaming and 100 Thieves, bringing their Summer Split record to 4-4, and improving their record against Spring Split playoff teams to 4-1. The success has been team wide, willing to put any individual except support Matthew "Matt" Elento into a carry role. Guardians are second to CLG at acquiring first blood (six out of eight games) and that first blood has been taken by all five players over the course of the split.
Son "Mickey" Young-min is coming off two of his better games of his career, matching his personal best in kills (six) on Talon, and then following up the performance with an eight kill game on Zoe. Those games raised his KDA to 4.5 on the split, second best among mid-laners (5.3, Eugene "Pobelter" Park). Sampson "Lourlo" Jackson has similarly had a magnificent split, showing his ability to adapt and excel in a chaotic meta. He has played seven different champions in his eight games played, and hasn't really had a bad showing, perhaps his worst being a 0/2/2, 211 CS Malphite game against FlyQuest where he couldn't seem to make an impact.
The Golden Guardians have its demons though as well, Baron Nashor being the biggest among them. It's managed a league low two barons over the Summer Split while giving up a league high nine to opponents. That differential is already worse than its differential over all of Spring Split (13 to 19).
Counter Logic Gaming
CLG has won four of its last five and look like one of the strongest teams in the NA LCS right now. They have showcased early game dominance in getting first blood in all eight of their games this split. Darshan "Darshan" Upadhyaya showed everyone what snowballing out of the top lane truly looks like with 11 kills on Darius against Echo Fox, his most in a game in the last three years of the NA LCS. Late game hasn't really been an issue for CLG either, with the team sticking to standard play and sporting one of the best traditional marksmen in Trevor "Stixxay" Hayes. Stixxay currently leads the league in KDA (7.8) and is third in CS/min behind Cody "Cody Sun" Sun and Tristan "PowerOfEvil" Schrage who both have benefited from being the linchpin in their teams' funnel strategies.
CLG has also seemed to have corrected its objective control problems from last split where they had a league low baron differential of -13. This split has seen an increase to a +1 baron differential along with inverting the dragon differential from -7 to +7.
FlyQuest
After losing its first three games of the split, FlyQuest roared back into the playoff picture winning four of five. The start of Week 3 marked a change in their starting support player from Kevin "Kwon" Kwon to Juan "JayJ" Guibert which has made a huge difference. Since moving to the starting role, JayJ has lead all supports with a 4.2 KDA and more importantly now sports a 3-1 record with FlyQuest. FlyQuest has also notably taken the first tower and rift herald in every game that JayJ has started this split. Its six first towers and six rift heralds this split have already caught the marks of five and six respectively from Spring Split.