TSM’s 2022 LCS Start is the Worst In Organization’s History

Team SoloMid’s (TSM) performance in the 2022 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) Spring Split has been the talk of the town these past few weeks. After a heartbreaking defeat to Golden Guardians (GG) on Week 2 Day 2 of the split, TSM is at the bottom of the standings alongside its archrivals: Counter Logic Gaming (CLG). For the first time in TSM’s history, the organization has gone without a win in the first two weeks of a season.

In December 2021, TSM announced that it was sticking with its jungler Mingyi "Spica" Lu and top-laner Heo "Huni" Seung-hoon for the 2022 season. They are the only two players from the 2021 roster to be retained by the organization. TSM announced that Team Liquid’s former attack damage carry (ADC) player Edward "Tactical" Ra will join the team and also added that it was roping in two Chinese players – mid-laner Zhu “Keaiduo” Xiong and support Wei “Shenyi” Zi-Jie – to round out its roster.

Barnburner against Golden Guardians

TSM faced off against Golden Guardians on the second day of the 2022 LCS Spring Split Week 2. Both teams were 0-2 stepping into week two, but Golden Guardians came out on top with two consecutive wins.

The match against GG was a game of cat and mouse as both the teams struggled to close it out. After an exciting 42-minute brawl on the rift, GG managed to break TSM’s nexus. Surprisingly, after the first minute in the game, nobody could have predicted GG to win as the team was significantly pushed behind after TSM invaded the enemy jungle to get first blood. As the match progressed, the teams were awfully close in terms of both gold advantage and kills, but GG did secure the dragon soul. Every time TSM turned towards a neutral objective on the map, GG took away an integral structure off TSM’s base.

As a final blow, TSM tried to break open GG’s base with the Elder Dragon buff on its hands but unfortunately lost to a base race.

Recap of TSM’s Spring Split

The LCS kicked off on 5th Feb and TSM went head-to-head against Evil Geniuses (EG), the team that secured second place in the Lock In tournament. On the other hand, TSM’s roster did not even get to participate in the Lock In tournament due to visa and travel-related issues. In the opening match of the LCS Spring Split, EG took home the win. TSM’s underwhelming performance continued on day two of the first week as it lost to Dignitas.

TSM entered week two with hopes of winning against both FlyQuest and Golden Guardians. But sadly TSM got dismantled by FlyQuest’s dominant showing on 12th Feb.

Despite four back-to-back losses, TSM did have promising moments in the split. Even in the match against Golden Guardians, TSM managed to close the gap and pick up objectives like Baron Nashor and performed quite well in team fights as well. In an interview with Upcomer, TSM’s top-laner Huni said that he expects TSM to struggle in the Spring split but come back stronger in Summer. He explained that the team was battling against the odds of having fewer hours of practice coupled with language barriers.

TSM will hope to break the losing streak in Week 3 as it goes up against the likes of Immortals and Cloud9.

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