The LPL and LCK teams have been huge favourites at MSI 2024 especially following G2 Esport's failure to make it to playoffs at the World Championship last year. While G2 Esports surprised many fans in their series against T1 last week, their 2-3 defeat means that any loss at MSI will eliminate them from the tournament now.
In their elimination game versus TOP Esports today, G2 Esports have pulled it off and Europe won their first Best-of-Five against an LPL team since 2018.
On the back of G2's botlane
Despite seeing some criticism for his series against T1, Steven "Hans Sama" Liv stepped it up as the first game started with a double kill in the botlane. The French played with showing great cohesion with his support Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle. After this 2v2 win and impressive plays from Rasmus "Caps" Winther, the game snowballed out of control for G2 Esports. On the back of their botlane, G2 carried all around the map.
Despite a little slump at the Baron Nashor where three members of G2 died, an overextension from Gao "Tian" Tian-Liang allowed the Europeans to return to the pit. After securing the nashor buff, G2 Esports managed to clutch their first victory in very dominating fashion.
In the second game, G2 Esports let AD Carry Yu "JackeyLove" Wen-Bo first pick his Draven during draft. While known as a treat on the champion, G2 was ready and answered with the picks of Kog'Maw and Braum. While this still put them in a very difficult position as Kog'Maw can be weak in the early game, G2 managed to outplay TES when they attempted to dive them in the early game. From that point on, Kog'Maw became really strong and Hans Sama snowballed the game once again. G2 Esports had a clear mission for the rest of the game; don't let Hans Sama die.
While completing this mission and picking up kills all over the map, G2 Esports showed impressive coordination when playing around Baron Nashor later in the game. While Tian dove into the pit with his Jarvan, G2 Esports successfully stopped hitting the Baron Nashor at 3000 HP for the entire fight, killing TES players one by one and finally securing the giant worm.
A close last game to complete the series
The last game was more difficult for G2 as Top Esports managed to secure an early lead. This time, Draven was in Hans Sama's hands. While he couldn't secure an early lead, Hans later managed to earn two shutdowns and banked a lot of gold. While this wasn't enough to get a lead, this time, Toplaner Sergen "BrokenBlade" Çelik stepped up with his K'sante. Despite this being the only game where G2 Esports got slightly behind, the Turkish toplaner managed to beat Bai "369" Jia-Hao in lane and carried later the first fight around Nashor where G2 reached a turning point.
Following this close fight, G2 Esports managed to secure Baron Nashor. Similar to game 2, great coordination secured them the buff as Caps pushed away the enemy jungler with his Tristana ult. Once again, G2 Esports managed to secure the win quickly after earning the buff and completing their upset against Top Esports.
A lot of credit is also due to Martin "Yike" Sundelin who consistently played on the right side of the map and coordinated a lot of plays for his team. Yike surprised Top Esports with his Ivern pick during the series that even earned a ban in the second game of the series.
What's next for G2 Esports at MSI
Overall G2's creative picks have benefitted them a lot during the series and can remind older EU fans of the MSI 2019 five years ago where G2 Esports lifted the MSI trophy. Since then, no Western team has reproduced that success. The current G2 Esports playing at MSI 2024, still with Caps in the team, is showing some similarities and is giving EU fans once again hope that we hadn't seen since the last peak of Europe at international competition.
In order to repeat this achievement of 2019, G2 Esports still need to win three Best-Of-Fives and complete the lower bracket run. Their next opponent will be the victor of the series between Team Liquid and T1 for a potential rematch against the current World Champions.
For more context, check out the full MSI 2024 bracket
on Sheep Esports.
