Team SoloMid will look to break Cloud9’s perfect record in week five of the 2020 LCS Summer Split.

C9 is looking scarier than ever. The spring champion is having the summer of a lifetime to this point. No one in the LCS has come even close to taking down C9 and TSM wants to put an end to that.

TSM is having a consistent season with good performances from all five players. Consistency might be enough to take down the rest of the teams in the LCS, but it likely won’t do the trick against Cloud9.

The style that Cloud9 is playing is not one people usually associate with the LCS. The spring champions are relentless in their aggression and are constantly making things happen. Even if they give up the early game, C9’s players always find their way back into the match. There isn’t a “weak side” on C9’s map, all five players are on the same page and marching to the beat of the same drum.

C9 vs. TSM, a clash of junglers

The key matchup for this game will be between junglers Mingyi “Spica” Lu and Robert “Blaber” Huang.

Being the TSM jungler has to be one of the toughest jobs in the LCS and Spica is handling the pressure with grace. Despite his lack of experience on the main stage, the jungler has delivered good performances. Spica is standing his ground against veteran junglers in the league, but his biggest test will be against the prodigy from North America, Blaber.

Blaber is the jungler every team dreams of. Aggressive, proactive, and vocal, there’s nothing that Blaber can’t do. C9’s jungler is no longer considered a wild card. The reckless attitude that people criticized in the past is exactly what’s pushing C9 forward. C9’s laners have to scramble to keep up with the team’s jungle-support duo, but they’ve been able to match that pace and take home wins as a result.

Blaber is everything that Spica is trying to become. In this match, Spica needs to be proactive, not reactive. Because Blaber is such a threat everywhere on the map, junglers make the mistake of trying to shadow him. This is not the way to take Blaber and C9 down.

On Winners Bet, odds have C9 over TSM with 1.25 against 3.56. Cloud9’s massive favorite status is warranted, but TSM isn’t completely hopeless.

TSM needs to identify its strongest lane and make things happen through that lane, forcing C9 to come to them and not the other way around. C9 has a way of accelerating matches, so TSM must try to stay in control of the situation and dictate the pace of the game.