After a suffering a surprise loss to IM that jeopardized their Round 2 playoff hopes, KT Rolster thrashed Prime 3-0 in their last match of the round to clinch third place and earn the final spot in the playoffs. Alongside CJ Entus' 3-1 victory over Team MVP, the result finalized playoff seeding and brackets for Round 2:
Though KT Rolster headed into their match with Prime as heavy favorites, they still risked triggering a variety of tie-breaker scenarios in the case of a loss. The most complicated scenario possible was a three-way tie between KT, IM, and SKT for the fourth place spot, only occurring if Prime could score an unlikely 3-1 victory. Though IM and SKT were certainly hoping for such an upset, it was not to be. KT Rolster took care of business against Prime with a 3-0 victory, claiming the playoff spot for themselves.
Instead, KT Rolster's 3-0 victory triggered a different series of tie-breakers, ones without any playoff implications. Still tied for 5th place, IM and SKT were forced to play a single, ace-match style tie-breaker to determine the 5th and 6th place spots. Rain defeated IM's ByuL to claim 5th place for SKT.
Meanwhile, the combination of their 0-3 loss to KT and penalties during the season (for infractions such as pausing to set hotkeys, or failing to type KeSPA accepted GG's on loss) caused Prime to tie Samsung for 7th place. The tie-breaker match between RorO and MarineKing went in the Samsung's ace's favor, raising Samsung to 7th place while Prime finished in last place for their second consecutive round.
Final round placements are used to award teams season points, which will be used to determine season-end rankings and season playoff seeding.
Predicting KT vs. Jin Air in the end. SKT huehuehue. Really sad at how severely Samsung fell off this round and even though I'm not a Prime fan I wanted some of the wonky tiebreaker scenarios could've happened
On March 26 2014 02:13 Bagration wrote: Who would have thought SKT wouldn't have made the playoffs with that lineup. Damn
I would. Losing coach Park is a major loss in leadership. SKT is full of talented individuals but doesn't make a great team right now. The team synergy has to click next round or you can expect a similar result.
On March 26 2014 02:13 Bagration wrote: Who would have thought SKT wouldn't have made the playoffs with that lineup. Damn
I would. Losing coach Park is a major loss in leadership. SKT is full of talented individuals but doesn't make a great team right now. The team synergy has to click next round or you can expect a similar result.
The same reason you sometimes see the Yankees suck and do absolutely nothing all season.
They are all really good players but it's very easy to lose in ProLeague if you don't specifically prepare for that one map agaisnt that one opponent you will face.
So, Prime and IM are only teams who didn't make playoffs in 2 rounds. IM will be there at sometime, Prime, i'm not sure that Creator will be able to carry this team even harder.
KT-MVP will be cute, DRG/Super will have to step up huge to win in bo7. But i guess, winner have good chance against CJ, if they snipe herO before he will go on bloodbath. And then Cure will all-kill team which will come to finals.
Feel bad for State. Two opportunities to be sent out and two times his team got 3-0'd before he could play. It's a shame for him, and kinda a shame for the foreign fans who wanted to see him. Glad I just didn't stay up to watch it just for him.
Crazy season, so many great story lines that developed...
Samsung: wild swing - losing Jangbi and no new signings but pulling through and getting 2nd in round 1 to complete collapse (especially of Solar) and only barely edging out Prime to be 2nd worst team this round
CJ: "coach park curse" and pathetic round 1 to quietly getting the job done and rising to 2nd round 2
SKT T1: a team so strong that 3rd place regular season and 2nd in playoffs was a disappointment, continuing to slide so far they don't even make playoffs...even with the legendary Fantaji back in action
JinAir: went from decent to dominating on the back of sOs showing more of his individual-league strength after bombing out round 1, and also Cure and Rogue kinda coming out of nowhere and stepping it up, all while Maru continues to dominate (new favorite team maybe )
MVP: pretty lackluster last round, but DRG is back, actually putting an ex-GSTL team into Proleague playoffs
Prime: a couple nice upsets, Creator getting closer and closer to his old fearsome status, MKP's return, the fall of Jila/Kal, the hunt for Byun, the amusing spectacles of eins and State; the storyline for Prime was "can they escape last place", and they almost did
I can't wait for playoffs and next round. Gonna predict KT beating MVP (including DRG v Flash playing an epic game, with the winner getting cheesed/all-ined the very next game) and also CJ, then falling to JinAir in the finals.
On March 26 2014 03:31 Arceus wrote: I recall some horrible memories about the CJ in the playoff thingy. Just hope that it might be different in sc2 and winnerleague format