G2 Esports Locks in Rumble Stage Spot After Third Win Over Evil Geniuses

G2 Esports came out on top once again in its match against Evil Geniuses at the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) 2022. For the third consecutive time, G2 took down the North American team and locked in its spot at the Rumble Stage of the tournament. Despite going toe-to-toe against G2 Esports and putting forth some highlight plays, Evil Geniuses could not capitalize on its advantages and take down the European giants.

Walking into Day 5 of the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) 2022, fans, players and the broadcast team were all gearing up for a very long schedule with as many as nine matches, including the replays from Group B, lined up today on 14th May. The day, however, kicked off with the Group C matches, the only group that is battling it out in a quadruple round-robin.

At the start of the day, the following were the score lines of each of these teams:

• G2 Esports (G2) - 4 wins 0 losses

• Evil Geniuses (EG) - 2 wins 2 losses

• ORDER (ORD) - 0 wins 4 losses

After this win, G2 Esports is now 5-0 while EG is 2-3.

The first match was a classic showdown between the winners of North America’s League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) and Europe’s League of Legends European Championship (LEC). The last two times G2 and EG went head-to-head at MSI 2022, the matches favored G2 Esports heavily, despite one of the games being very close.

In the first three days of the tournament, Kacper "Inspired" Słoma and Marcin "Jankos" Jankowski had already exchanged spicy words, making this third mano a mano, an exciting one. Notably, these two junglers were the “Featured Match-Up” of the game.

EG locked in the first Jinx of the tournament for Kyle "Danny" Sakamaki, who has played 16 games in total on the loose cannon. G2 got its hands on the Yasuo-Diana lethal combo for Rasmus "caPs" Borregaard Winther and Jankos to pull off.

Jankos gets first blood

Jinx and Philippe "Vulcan" Laflamme’s Tahm Kench pushed the wave under G2 bot lane's tower very early on. Likewise, Joseph Joon "jojopyun" Pyun also sought the help of his jungler to push Yasuo underneath his tower, allowing Inspired to counter jungle.

True to his nickname first blood king, Jankos picked up the first kill of the game and this was followed by a very explosive early game with kills falling all across the map. Fans witnessed caPs’ prowess on Yasuo as he outplayed three members of the EG roster.

Evil Geniuses answered back very swiftly as it picked up Rift Herald. However, sporadic kills on G2’s pockets equaled the gold of the two teams. Inspired facilitated a lot of engagements for Evil Geniuses and picked up small wins for the team, while Danny and Vulcan pressed on their advantages over Victor "Flakked" Lirola Tortosa and Raphaël "Targamas" Crabbé. Instead of playing towards Jeong "Impact" Eon-young on the top lane against Sergen "Broken Blade" Çelik, EG continued to funnel its resources into Danny, in an attempt to make him a late-game monster on Jinx. At 14:30 minutes, EG had two towers under its belt but G2 was up in kills.

G2 finds a successful fight

At 21 minutes, G2 won an excellent team fight and secured the second dragon of the game, and even killed Baron Nashor. The European team picked up a 3K gold lead after picking up important objectives including big monsters, towers, and kills. Despite losing a few members, G2 marched down the mid-lane and took down the inner mid-lane tower, and also cut its losses short by picking up a few extra kills on the spread-out Evil Geniuses lineup.

caPs becomes a side lane threat

caPs was a nuisance the entire game as he kept split pushing on Yasuo, a champion that is meant to do just that. At 30 minutes, caPs was 9/1/5 with 277 cs [creep score], and a 700 gold bounty on his head. Evil Geniuses started a fight at the Baron Nashor pit and killed three members of the G2 roster and secured the Baron buff. However, G2 Esports had picked up the Hextech soul in the meantime, making the Senna a real threat.

Evil Geniuses turns to Danny but in vain

The outcome of the game completely rested on Danny’s playmaking ability on Jinx. At 37 minutes, he was full-build and raked in a bounty with a K/D/A of 3/2/6 and 389 cs farm. After utilizing the bounties that were active, Evil Geniuses collected a 3K gold lead over G2 Esports.

But the Yasuo-Diana wombo combo shut down Danny completely and aced Evil Geniuses. After killing Danny and the rest of the EG squad, G2 broke into the base and ended the game in just over 39 minutes.