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Team SoloMid met expectations on Sunday and moved itself one step closer to a first round playoff bye as it defeated Team EnVyUs 2-1 in Los Angeles during Week 8, Day 3 of the North American League of Legends Championship Series.
With Team SoloMid (12-4, 26-11 match record) sitting at the top of the standings while Team EnVyUs (8-8, 21-22 match record) remains in the middle of the pack, the result of the series was no surprise, but EnVyUs was able to put up a much better fight than expected.
EnVyUs found itself with an early lead in Game 1 after capitalizing on a botched dive by TSM and took full control of the map. Although it was able to run much of the mid game, EnVyUs seemed unsure of how to close out the game, which allowed TSM to take a late game teamfight off the back of mid laner Soren "Bjergsen" Bjerg's Syndra that led to a Game 1 win.
EnVyUs shook off the defeat and bounced back in Game 2, once again finding a massive early lead largely due to the impressive jungling by Nam "LirA" Tae-yoo on Elise. Despite the game being extremely extended, the advantage and positioning LirA brought was enough to secure a Game 2 victory in the nearly hour-long matchup.
TSM found itself on the back foot once again in Game 3, falling behind early and giving up a large amount of map control to EnVyUs. Although TSM was at a large disadvantage, the team was able to mount several late teamfight victories off the back of picks from Bjergsen's Syndra and top laner Kevin "Hauntzer" Yarnell's Jarvan IV. After taking several fights, TSM was able to close out the game in 43 minutes and secure the series victory.
Throughout the series, the games didn't seem to be a battle of teams rather than a battle of LirA against Bjergsen. With both players putting up extremely impressive performances, the series came down to which player was performing best in a given game.
Although LirA was able to find early leads for EnVyUs in all three games, Bjergsen was able to keep his cool and land consistent multi-man stuns with Syndra to initiate fights and bring his team back into things. This meant that despite LirA's dominant early game, the late game went in TSM's favor, allowing it to claim the series victory 2-1 after three extremely back-and-forth games.
Team SoloMid will look to solidify its first round playoff bye as it takes on Phoenix1 at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday. EnVyUs will look to shake off the defeat during a Friday match against Immortals at 6 p.m.