With the conclusion of Week 5, we are now more than halfway through the Spring Split, and it’s time to start looking at who is going to make it into the finals. While some crazy runs are always possible – we’ve seen some miraculous comebacks before – we are pretty sure we already know who two of the competitors will be, and we’re equally sure which three teams won’t be making an appearance.

We can pretty much guarantee that Echo Fox and Cloud9 are going to be in the finals, even if they somehow manage to slip from their current standing. Their current records – 9W-1L for Fox and 8W-2L for C9 – have simply shown them as teams above the rest.

Despite not being built around an all-star as many of the new rosters are, Fox has been trouncing opponents left and right. Though they had a surprising and bewildering loss against CLG in Week 3, and despite some rough games against opponents like the Guardians, they are still winning consistently. C9, on the other hand, has only lost to Fox, and against everyone else, they have shown stellar map control and macro plays, and we aren’t expecting that to change.

At a minimum, we can expect 4 more wins from each team – which is a huge undervaluation for their 90% and 80% win rates respectively. That will put them out of the reach of the bottom five teams completely, while 100Thieves in fifth could potentially overtake C9 if they win literally every match from here out (they won’t). The real fight is going to be for the third and fourth place spots.

Clutch Gaming and Team Liquid are the current frontrunners for the last two Finals spots, but not much is separating them from the rest. This is especially true with how well FlyQuest has been performing recently. TL are still a favorite to make it, if only because of Doubelift’s explosive drive for all things involving trophies (also, last split he said three teams was enough to hold NA LCS championships, so we’d like to see him have to beat his own argument).

Clutch have risen surprisingly well in the past few weeks, but we haven’t seen enough playmaking or control to really cement faith. If Febiven can continue to rise as a mid though, he may just challenge for best in NA. 100Thieves still also has a lot of potential, but while they started the split phenomenally, they have recently had uneven performances from nearly every member except Aphromoo.

Which leaves the bottom three. It is certainly statistically possible for CLG (8th), OpTic (9th), and the Guardians (10th) to rise up to take a third or fourth place spot, but we think we’ll look more at how they’ve been playing as a factor. CLG have been a mess this split. Despite some amazing stuff out of Darshan in particular, CLG have been playing like a team without a leader. They are too aggressive, too wild, and too unfocused. Despite Jatt’s predictions, it seems highly unlikely these guys will find leadership and take a finals spot.

OpTic are another team with piles of potential that still haven’t come together. They might follow in Clutch’s footsteps and start to rise – especially with talent like PowerofEvil – but we simply haven’t seen a reason to think that will happen before the finals.

And in last, the Golden Guardians, who we really really want to see somehow make it into the finals. After nearly beating Fox, and actually beating both 100T and TL, these guys have turned on a switch that has worked some kind of magic. The bad news is that it was probably too late. Since they’re revitalization, they’ve averaged a win a week, which would give them only 6 wins come finals time, which simply won’t be enough. Maybe they’ll prove us wrong, but it’s far more likely the current frontrunners will keep their spots or perhaps be pushed out by 100T or FlyQuest.