The 2022 League of Legends Championship Series Summer split is officially at the halfway point with Week 5 kicking off the second half of the double-round robin. All 10 teams will get another shot at some of the teams that they have already gone up against either looking for revenge or looking for a season sweep. Here are the top storylines to follow in Week 5 of the 2022 LCS Summer split.
CLG’s retake test
Counter Logic Gaming completely took over the first two weeks of the 2022 LCS Summer split; a sentence that hasn’t been said in around five years. With the team entering Week 3 in first place and their first true test of the split in front of them, they failed — but not without an asterisk. Week 3 saw CLG go up against two of the top teams in the league, but with their jungler Juan “Contractz” Garcia contracting COVID-19, CLG obviously didn’t play at their best; they ended up completely swept in Week 3. With Contractz over COVID-19 in Week 4, CLG had a so-so week going 1-1 which still put them in a tie fourth heading into Week 5.
Giving the team the benefit of the doubt of simply playing catchup with the COVID-19 incident, CLG finally gets a chance to show the league if they are contenders or not as they go up against Evil Geniuses and 100 Thieves in Week 5. A clean week here would definitely raise their favor among fans and analysts alike. However, an 0-2 week would all but deflate any hype the team had; CLG would sit in the playoff race and nothing more. Either way, that’s still an improvement for a team that hasn’t even been in the playoffs in two years.
Was TSM’s last game a fluke?
A mix of unfortunate events caused TSM to make some drastic roster moves to begin Week 4 which included their top lane star “Huni” stepping down due to wrist issues. The result was the organization bringing up two rookies from their Academy team and bringing in another Academy player from a different team. With absolutely zero expectations, TSM got clapped in their first game against Cloud9, but they turned around and beat FlyQuest in convincing fashion. Bot laner Tony “Instinct” Ng even grabbed a pentakill in his second ever LCS game.
TSM has rekindled their flame with them gaining momentum coming into Week 5; but with matches against 100T and IMT, this will be TSM’s chance to stoke the fire or let the flame die out.
Can 100 reclaim the top
Last year’s 2021 LCS champions 100 ran it back in 2022 with the same exact roster that granted them their first ever LCS championship. But with other teams improving quickly, they no longer find themselves alone at the top. In fact, EG has run away as the league’s best team. But with that said, 100 are still in a good position to make it back to Worlds but to get there as the first seed, they are going to have to play a lot better.
Entering Week 5, 100 are in second place in the 2022 LCS Summer standings but with just a 6-3 record. Against the other teams in the top six, they are just 2-3 with one of their wins coming against CLG during the COVID-19 week. But despite being two games back behind EG, 100 have an opportunity to close the gap a little as they play them in Week 5.
