Counter Logic Gaming smashed Team Dignitas in a 3-0 series sweep on Saturday in a battle for third place in the North America League of Legends Championship Series Summer Split Playoffs in Boston.
After being trounced in the quarterfinals, CLG managed to bounce back and put together a dominant performance against Dignitas. CLG secured first blood in each game while even picking up Level 1 teamfight victories in Games 2 and 3.
CLG's solo laners often benefited from early gold leads and continued to snowball the advantage throughout the mid-game thanks to help from jungler Omar "OmarGod" Amin and support Zaqueri "aphromoo" Black. The jungle-support duo roaming in tandem has emerged as one of the better strategies in the current meta, and this series was a perfect example of why as it set up kills and pushed objectives quickly and efficiently throughout the matches.
Team Dignitas was desperate to force plays after losing Game 1, and it showed in the Level 1 invades the rest of the series that were squashed by CLG. While Dignitas managed to make some well-coordinated plays in the mid-game, most of the teamfight engages ended up in a loss. In Game 3, top laner Kim "Ssumday" Chan-ho's Jarvan IV got punished a few times for greedily chasing after kills, which is not a good look for one of the team's best players.
Player of the Series honors went to Counter Logic Gaming mid laner Choi "Huhi" Jae-hyun, who earned a 13/3/23 KDA (kills/deaths/assists) across the series. Huhi forced Dignitas to ban some of his favorite off-meta champions, which allowed him to pick up the champions favored by the meta, and he was superb with them.
In Games 1 and 2, Huhi grouped up and helped dominate teamfights on Lucian and Orianna before turning into a split-pushing monster on Kassadin in Game 3.
While the rookie jungler OmarGod had a difficult time dealing with jungle invades earlier in the playoffs, his team was right there to give him plenty of support in this series. OmarGod was put on tank champions with slow first clears here and was protected by his teammates early.
The help from the rest of CLG gave him confidence to make good engages and control objectives in the mid-games as CLG ran away with leads. With such a strong performance on Saturday, the team should feel a bit more confident with him going into the regional qualifier next week.
The hunt for Worlds is still on for both of these teams. Dignitas will face off with FlyQuest on Friday, and Counter Logic Gaming awaits the winner on Saturday.