After coming back from the 2020 League of Legends World Championship, Team SoloMid bot laner Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng has had some time to reflect on his and his team’s poor results.
After TSM got knocked out of the Worlds group stage with a 0-6 record, there has been a lot of time for the players to reflect on the results and what went wrong. After returning to North America, Doublelift has been streaming regularly and has talked about his Worlds experience.
According to Doublelift, TSM did fine in scrims doing its first week, and the team managed to go toe-to-toe with some of the best squads at the tournament. Doublelift didn’t drop any names of the teams they did well against in the beginning, but says that they were “at least splitting games” against the top teams at Worlds.
TSM went down to a 10% win rate in scrims at Worlds 2020
Doing well in scrims and translating it to the games on stage isn’t always easy, and TSM got to feel that in the hardest way possible. Despite the fine scrim results in the first week, TSM lost its first three games in the Worlds group stage.
The poor start put TSM in a do or die position going into the second week of groups, forcing the team to win all three games on the last day.
Doublelift explained that the tough start to the tournament had an effect on the team’s mood, which ultimately made them play worse and lose trust in each other. These problems were easily reflected in their games, also from a viewer’s perspective. TSM played with little to no confidence and seemed to lack the aggression needed to win on the Worlds stage.
After the mood took a swing in the wrong direction, it started to reflect both on stage and in TSM’s scrims. Scrims are the most effective ways for teams to practice at any given tournament, especially at Worlds where the best teams from all regions are available to scrim.
“After the first week we probably had a 10% win rate in scrims,” Doublelift said. “I was grateful to win a single game per day, so I pretty much knew that it was gonna be really hard for us to win,”
TSM ended the 2020 World Championship with fourth place in group C and a 0-6 record. It’s the first time in Worlds history that a team from a major region goes out without a win.
Since Worlds, mid laner Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg has chosen to retire and become the new head coach of TSM. TSM will be back on Summoner’s Rift when the 2021 season starts at the beginning of next year.
