Kespa Cup is the annual tournament in Korea, where both amateur and professional teams participate during the off-season between Worlds and the next LCK Split.
The tournament started with 20 teams, but only one will take the glory and call themselves Kespa Champion.
KespaCup resumes with semis in 5minutes @T1LoL T1 vs @SBGaming_KOR @BrendanValdes and I are casting today https://t.co/tnITFKJVTW
— LS (@LSXYZ9) January 3, 2020
The competition was not supposed to have an English stream, but T1 alongside GenG chipped in with their support and an English stream was set up with the casters from LCK.
The Kespa Cup gives a brief look at the new roster of the upcoming LCK season and they synergy built between the players. The first semifinal was between T1 and Sandbox Gaming. Both teams underwent some roster changes.
T1 has a new top side with Roach/Canna in the top lane and Cuzz in the jungle, while Sandbox Gaming has Leo/Gorilla as their bottom lane. Fans of both teams had high hopes from their offseason roster changes. While Sandbox is not that known to the Western scene, T1(ex-SKT) is reasonably known after winning 3 World Championships.
Sandbox managed to demolish SKT in the first two games, but they have subbed out mid lane & bottom lane for the 3rd game for unknown reasons. As a result, T1 capitalized on this and stomped the subbed in rookies. For the 4th game, Sandbox subbed the main mid/bot lane back in and they managed to have a convincing win once again, knocking out T1 from the tournament.
Player of the series: OnFleek – 2 nominations, Leo – 1 nomination, Teddy – 1 nomination. OnFleek won MVP for 2nd game, where he played Elise and nullified the early game of T1, and for the 4th game, where he played Olaf and managed to score a Pentakill. He was demolishing all the T1 lanes, allowing for his laners to snowball and carry the game. He has been a focal point of Sandbox Gaming in the past splits as well, but they had some other glaring issues, which did not allow them to succeed.
With the upgraded roster, Sandbox Gaming might be looking at retaking the LCK throne from T1 in the upcoming Splits, after showing a great display of skill, coordination, and map awareness during the best-of-five-series today.
The upcoming match will be between DragonX and Damwon Gaming tomorrow. While Damwon’s Gaming roster remained mostly unchanged, DragonX went significant changes, acquiring both Doran and Chovy in the solo laners. The duo thrived under Griffin and keeps thriving under DragonX, the main reason being the head coach cvMax, who coached them on Griffin.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the DragonX vs. Damwon Gaming to see who will be the second finalist of the 2019 Kespa Cup.
