If anyone had said that the top three teams in the NA LCS – CLG, TSM, and Cloud9 – would all be out of the League of Legends 2018 Spring split, we would have thought they were crazy, but here we are. Team Liquid, Clutch Gaming, 100 Thieves, and Echo Fox are all that remain, making three of the top four teams completely new teams to the NA LCS. Not only that, TSM has just been delivered a defeat they haven’t seen the likes of in ten straight NA LCS playoffs.

Team Liquid looked good coming into the Spring split, then they looked bad, then good again. They looked like a one-trick pony, only able to rely on Doublift and Olleh and without any real cohesion. What happened to Cloud9 showed a different story though.

Liquid played around the rest of their team, perhaps because all three games – three games that Cloud9 lost in a sweep – C9 target banned tanks with a hard focus on the top lane. It was difficult to tell if C9 thought that they would target ban because they knew Impact’s playstyle so well or because they needed to assist Licorice, who after coming out like a rocket has been sputtering and failing in game after game. Whatever the idea, it was an utter failure. Target banning Impact and tanks made little to no sense, and doing it every single game – even after losing – seemed like complete insanity. If the first loss didn’t convince them to change it up, the second surely should have.

For Liquid, a team that has yet to play around their toplaner, their win condition seemed to be playing entirely around him – which was what C9 was trying to avoid. Liquid chose Singed in Game 2 and completely decimated Licorice and C9. By the end of the third game, C9 was out, and fans and foes alike were scratching their heads at what strategy C9 could possibly have been going with.

Clutch Gaming has beat TSM before, but that was back when TSM was losing to everybody. In recent weeks, they have been doing surprisingly well, even managing to do what CLG could not and struggle from the bottom straight into the playoffs. Unfortunately, TSM’s streak of quality play was undone this weekend. But it wasn’t just TSM playing poorly. TSM seemed to force Clutch into playing like they never had before, and what they found was a monster they had not reckoned for. Unfortunately for TSM, the loss against Clutch means that for the first time in five years – 10 straight NA LCS playoffs – TSM won’t be making it to the finals. They’ve been kicked out before even the semifinals.

In previous games, Clutch played a passive late game strategy, one that looked like a pale imitation of TSM. In their current state, it seemed that TSM could simply play them at the same game and beat them, but it was TSM that changed the strategy – not Clutch – and it didn’t exactly work in their favor.

Except for taking the first game in the series, TSM strategy didn’t work. Instead, they forced Clutch into playing out of their comfort zone, which was either a master plan trap by the team, or just awakening something in them they didn’t know they had. They played aggressive and hard, and the NV trinity in Hakuho, Apollo, and LirA played like true monsters.

It didn’t help that the weakest link of TSM – their bot lane – lost whatever traction they had started to gain. Zven alone accounted for almost half of his team’s deaths in Game 3. Granted, he was playing a Kog’Maw in a less than stellar comp for protecting him, but the amount of times he was caught out was simply ludicrous. This wasn’t exactly an anamolous score, either. Almost every game, MikeYeung, Hauntzer, and Bjergsen played well while Mithy was doing things like taking a Tahm Kench ulti behind Clutch when his team clearly wasn’t synced to engage. Hesitation, more than anything, could be seen in the TSM plays where some players would start to leave then turn back to reengage.