The birthday buff was real in the LCS playoffs today, with mid laner Quad putting on a clinic to see his squad FlyQuest clinch its first League of Legends World Championship spot in four years over series favorite Cloud9.
The 22-year-old League mid laner was simply too good for Jojopyun and C9, racking up a 25-5 kill/death score in the 3-1 series victory. C9 drew first blood by taking the opening game, but FlyQuest bounced back and then never looked back as they ran over the 2024 LCS Summer Split runners-up. In the end Quad managed an 81 percent kill participation, highlighted by an impressive nine-kill effort in game two on Smolder.
It took more than a single player stepping up for FlyQuest to get the job done though; top laner Bwipo recovered after a rough first game in what proved to be a purely Renekton vs. K’Sante battle against Thanatos, while jungler Inspired scored a crucial Baron steal late in game three to turn the tide for the boys in green.
“I knew we were going to win if we played like we have in practice,” Inspired said in his post-game LCS interview on-stage, adding that his League squad had finally gotten on the same page and had been working on squashing as many mistakes from their game as possible. “The team is finally doing only coordinated plays, in this game and the whole series we never took a fight when we didn’t need to.”
It’s the second time FlyQuest will raise its banner at League‘s pinnacle tournament, with its first appearance coming way back in 2020 with the likes of Santorin, PowerOfEvil, and WildTurtle flying the flag. A 3-3 record in the round-robin stage that time wasn’t enough to see the NA squad through the round-robin stage that year.
FlyQuest hasn’t missed a beat this season after adding Quad in place of veteran Jensen; while they could not keep pace with the top two and repeat their Spring performance in Summer, they remain on track for back-to-back grand finals. That said, regardless of how the LCS bracket runs from here, they’ve already earned that crucial Worlds ticket.
For favorites C9, they’re not out of the running yet but can’t afford another slip-up in the lower bracket. The famed League organization has made it to 10 of the past 11 Worlds tournaments, just missing out in 2020, but they’ll need to first win against either 100 Thieves or Dignitas next Sunday or they’ll be absent once again.
FlyQuest, meanwhile, takes on Team Liquid in the upper bracket final on Saturday, Aug. 31 and even though their primary objective is complete, Inspired won’t be laying down without a fight. “There wasn’t much fighting going on [today against C9], the game was pretty controlled, and I think Liquid is very good at that as well so it’s not going to be as easy.”
