First, Clutch Gaming and Echo Fox squared off for third place, then 100 Thieves duked it out with Team Liquid to see who would stand as the best team in North America. While both matchups were hard fought, both still ended in 3-0 sweeps. Oddly enough, both teams also played heavily around their jungler, and it was these players which were the deciding factors in the matches.

We knew going into this that Clutch really only had two options. They were either going to continue their dominating play and presence, or they were going to stumble and fall. Unfortunately for them, it was a rocky road.

Echo Fox quickly identified a simple win condition – Dardoch. Dardoch is a player with a tumultuous past, one who has often had run ins with other players and teams, casting him as somewhat of a black sheep in the NA LCS. However, his skills as a player have never been in doubt, and Echo Fox showed that they have reigned him in quite well. His performances on Olaf are well known (and usually well feared), and Fox made the call early on to have Dardoch become a harassing, overpowering presence. The first game, he cleared eight camps and then a dragon without stopping. He grew monstrously huge, and Clutch simply had no strategy to deal with him.

Game 2, Fox put Dardoch right back onto Olaf, and this game was the quickest of the entire split, ending at just 21 minutes in 3-18 kills and 28k to 45k gold. Unfortunately, after 100 Thieves defeated them, Clutch seemed to have lost their magic, and they fell back to a pattern we had seen before. When a team throws a strategy or tactic at them they were unfamiliar with, they would buckle. They managed to overcome that leading up to the playoffs, but their Achilles heel returned in the third place match and cost them the game.

There were a lot of factors in these games – like Impact’s Singed being a ridiculous and monstrous threat in Game 1 or Doublelift being a huge threat on Tristana in Game 2 – but Xmithie stole the show.

Xmithie started the series by stealing a Baron in Game 1 that snowballed into win. In Game 2, his trundle roamed across the entire map, killing, ganking, and pressuring the Thieves in a way that they were simply unable to react to. This is a champion that Xmithie is known for unleashing in scrims, and one which other players rightly fear. However, the Thieves made the mistake of thinking they could handle it.

Team Liquid’s victory was made all the more meaningful following Doublelift’s tragedy last week. It was the kind of thing unimaginable for any person, let alone one in the spotlight, but Doublelift announced he was determined to play. The weight of these games was especially heavy considering the burden on his shoulders, but he showed that he was a true champion and professional, and he earned his victory and his place as one of the top competitors the esport has ever known.