“When we first went into the game I just wanted to beat them really badly.”

Team SoloMid top laner Marcus “Dyrus” Hill is no stranger to the rivalry between his team and Counter Logic Gaming. Going 8-8 against one another in past regular season matches, CLG and TSM were staring down high stakes as the top two teams in the NA LCS.

Heading into the big game, the pressure to perform against another top tier team was mounting. Dyrus explains how when he was preparing for the match, he was expecting CLG to do well based on their performance in practice games and their adaptable team play. “After playing them, it does feel that they are better than us,” Dyrus told Lolesports. “Although they did play much worse on stage, the picks were very even, so as I went into that game, no one knew what was going to happen really.”

What happened was a miserable early and mid game for TSM. “CLG’s always been strong at map vision and map rotations and warding control,” says Dyrus. “Their decision-making on doing things, they’re usually first to do it and they’re in a better position to do things, and they make very, very good calls.” So good, in fact, that CLG secured first blood, maintained superior vision control, obtained a gold lead by breaking down almost all of TSM’s turrets, and killed Dragon four times before TSM finally found an opening to turn things around.

The Comeback

With their backs literally against a wall thanks to Darshan “ZionSpartan” Upadhyaya’s Gnar, TSM pivoted and managed to successfully crush CLG in a 5 vs. 5 teamfight, both due to strong mechanical play on their part and some errors made by CLG. “Assuming they didn’t make all these middle-to-late-game mistakes, they could have easily closed out the game,” says Dyrus. “They got every single dragon. We were late for every single one. We just endured and tried to find every way possible we could win, and we just never gave up.”

From the successful Dragon to the following teamfight in which TSM took down three of CLG’s champions, things were starting to look up for the Bay Life bros. But victory was still a ways off. What eventually helped give them the final push wasn’t aggressive behavior, but rather a good dose of restraint around the Baron pit.

“[Patience] played an important role in the outcome of this match,” Dyrus says. “When [Santorin] got blocked from stealing [Baron], it was actually better that he got blocked from stealing it because if he died, then we wouldn’t have been able to fight after and fight for the Dragon vision.”

Securing the follow-up Dragon while also taking out three of CLG’s players was exactly what TSM needed to propel them to victory. And while the win was hard fought, afterwards when analyzing the match, Dyrus admits it was incredibly close. “Zion was tanky, I was tanky, Bjergsen was stronger than Link, Turtle and Doublelift were very, very similar, except Turtle scales better. And for both supports, we have [crowd control] while they have the better scaling support. But it was all in the playmaking.”

“In the teamfights, even though they were ahead, it wasn’t that far off, because when we messed up somewhere, we were just like alright, we need to cut ties, cut losses, and just move on to the next thing,” he says, going on to explain how important it was for TSM to keep their heads in the game. “If we stay tilted, if we stay sad, if we don’t try our best or give it our all, we would have never pulled off that win.”

He sums up the entire game nicely, saying, “To our credit we were able to endure and to CLG’s credit they played the early and middle game phenomenally and they just didn’t endure towards the end.”

The Rivalry

After the game, Dyrus spent some time reflecting on the TSM vs. CLG rivalry. “Going into this match, I felt a lot of animosity towards CLG cause of the hype and how they always come back with hype even though we beat them half the time. I’m like, what rivalry?” he says with a smile. “But at the same time, every time we beat them, it’s not a stomp really. It’s really, really close and it comes down to a game of wits and very, very small leads.”

And while TSM were able to outsmart CLG this time around, Dyrus also believes that CLG has an unfortunate trend of falling off in the NA LCS after losing to TSM. “After beating them, every time we’ve beaten them, I actually feel bad for them,” he says. “Because now, they’re going to start falling apart, blaming each other. But if they don’t, then they’ll be really, really strong this year. Because that’s what usually happens to CLG. We’ll barely beat them, then they’ll go on tilt and turn on each other.”

As for TSM? “When that happens to us, we just come back. And that’s why we’ve always been better. Because they weren’t able to recover.”