It has been two years since CLG has won an NA LCS split. While they routinely finish close to the front of the pack, they have a tendency to throw away leads and to get too hyped for their own progress. This leads to sloppy, aggressive League of Legends plays that other teams can aggress on. However, we have seen a very different CLG for the past few weekends, but against Echo Fox, CLG has always brought their A game. After beating them in their first encounter – and giving Fox their first loss of the split – CLG had a rematch with them this weekend, and they once again defeated the number one team in an unexpected way.

CLG is just playing too good to be ignored right now. This match was all about outplaying the map – not the players – and this caught Echo Fox completely off guard. When they last met, Darshan promised to beat Huni in lane, and he did and then led the team to victory. This time around, Darshan played reserved and collected. Huni crushed him in-lane after choosing Trundle into his Cho’Gath and into Reignover’s Sejuani. Trundle is a pretty infamous tank buster, so it was a solid choice by Fox, but it was also a trap laid out by CLG.

By 10 minutes, Huni was up 30 cs in the top lane, but he let this overconfidence walk him right into death. While heading to take Rift, he seemed to be playing with the blast cone rather than playing serious, and it allowed CLG to roam down and kill him and secure Rift. This was the start of things going sour for Fox. Fox had planned on relying on Huni’s strength as a split-pusher, but they had not accounted for the fact that CLG might out-rotate them and pick off their split-pushing comp. Every time that Fox split, CLG collapsed and killed them. By 25 minutes, CLG was up 5k, and Fox seemed unable to come up with a counter attack for CLG’s rotation and team fighting.

But if anyone was the star of this game, it was Biofrost. An often overlooked support, Biofrost has had more mediocre games than amazing ones. However, when it counted, he came up in spades. It’s likely CLG wouldn’t have made half the plays they did without his help, and while they still might have won, he alone did more to secure victory the team than almost anyone else.

The real story here is that while Fox was playing around just Huni, CLG didn’t play around Biofrost, even if he was playing like a beast. CLG played as a collected unit. Darshan didn’t tilt when he lost lane, and he knew what he had to do against the enemy team. It was by playing well individually that they were able to secure to win, and if they keep this up, they just might make it to the playoffs.