JACKSONVILLE, Ill.- The Illinois College Esports team faced the University of Missouri in the semi final round of the MEC Playoffs. The team defeated Mizzou after two games to advance to the MEC finals.
Going into game one both teams stuck to their guns in the draft playing high priority top laners that would push the tempo of the game and would exploit the other off of even a minor advantage.
The major difference was the jungle matchup, and
Tim Blackwell "Timmy Tam" rose to the occasion. Although Mizzou's jungler gave looked to create early lane pressure on his Elise, IC set up their wave perfectly around the gank pressure. Blackwell"Timmy Tam" was the main beneficiary allowing him to jump out to a massive cs lead early.
Off of that early tempo, Illinois College was then able to rotate mid, support, and jungle up to the top lane. This set up
Dalton Swaino "Prankuru" to snowball his match up. This would then lead IC to look for drake soul at twenty-two minutes and take a convincing game one.
Going into game two Mizzou took a less volatile draft with much more scaling pushing IC to end the game early and not allow Mizzou a foothold. Off of a rocky first blood dive on top tower, IC and Mizzou went one for one. Not wanting to see a repeat of game one, Mizzou looked to finally execute on some early game aggression with a top dive of their own. Swaino "Prankuru" was ready, leading to a massive outplay under tower. This led to a two for zero trade in IC's favor.
The mid game was much closer with Mizzou fighting back using Corki package to contest dragon fights, but IC was not going to be denied the two zero series cracking the game open off of a barron trade team fight trading barron for a four for zero fight as well as ocean drake soul leading them to a game two win.
After the first round of playoffs, Blackwell "Timmy Tam" ranks second on player KDA at 14.
Tony Bautista-Foti "King Me" and Swaino "Prankuru" rank second and third place in kills at 16 and 15 respectively. Blackwell "Timmy Tam" is tied for second on least deaths at 2 with GrandView's "Chookie".
Blackwell "Timmy Tam" and
Sean Corley "ColdCottageKoala" stand at first and second most assists at 24 and 23 respectively. Corley "ColdCottageKoala'' and
Christian Varacalli "cvara" have second and third place for wards placed at 66 and 75 wards each. Swaino"Prankuru" has the third highest gold per minute at 397. Finally the team has the second highest team KDA at 6.6 trailing GrandView.
IC will now take on GrandView in the finals of the MEC playoffs. The finals will be this coming Saturday, 3/27 at 5:00 PM CT.
