SK Gaming beat Team Vitality for Fastest Win in LEC History
By Wyatt Fossett ·
The members of SK Gaming crush heavyweight Team Vitality to claim the fastest win in European League of Legends history, and keep their playoff hopes alive.
With their playoff hopes on the table, SK Gaming threw down all of their cards and crushed Team Vitality's hopes of moving up to 2nd place in the LEC, in what was the fastest game in European League of Legends history.
The final week of the League of Legends European Championship was set to be filled to the brim of the rift with drama, and it truly hasn’t disappointed so far. Yesterday, Fnatic made heroic plays in order to take down the leaders of the LEC in G2 Esports. Today, a must-win game for SK Gaming turned into a match for the record books.
The Head-to-Head
In what the Riot Games’ Esports team dubbed the “match of the day”, SK Gaming needed to get another win on the weekend in order to keep their very slim playoff hopes alive as we pointed out in our LEC Week 9 preview. After beating the unimpressive team in Rogue yesterday, they had a far less likely victory ahead of themselves on this fateful day.
A must win match for @SKGaming to stay in the race for playoffs, while @TeamVitality still want to grab that 2nd place:
— lolesports (@lolesports) March 16, 2019
It's time for the #LEC Match of the Day between @TeamVitality and @SKGaming!
? https://t.co/wCghUMbh0N pic.twitter.com/yTuv6DFCPm
Team Vitality, on the other hand, woke up on Saturday sitting in 5th place among the LEC standings but had some pressure in their pocket to place on three of the teams above them. With a win, they would temporarily overtake the 2nd seed position on the standings, as they had an advantage in the head-to-head records. This would put all of the cards in the hands of Excel (who play Origen in the match following SK versus VIT) and the Fnatic and Splyce squads (who play each other in the final game of the day.)
As the teams prepared to step into the rift, nothing too out of the ordinary was happening. SK top-laner Werlyb snatched up his infamous Jax pick during the champion select stage, a champion that gets some play in league matches, but not a whole lot.
Once the two teams got into the game, the snowball started early and continued to roll. It quickly grew beyond the size that Team Vitality could handle, and it became clear that only a miracle would spell out a Vitality win.
The Fastest Game In EU League of Legends
After another successful team-fight that ended in an SK Gaming ace over Team Vitality, Selfmade and Co. wreaked havoc on the opposing base, only giving up one life (sorry Werlyb) in the process. Within seconds, the health of the Vitality Nexus would be zeroed, and SK Gaming would etch their names into the League of Legends European Championship history books with a record-setting run on speed.
In total, the match between SK Gaming and Team Vitality stretched to a minimal 20 minutes and 20 seconds long. Beating out the previous record holder by mere seconds.
Over the course of their very brief tussle, SK Gaming grew a 13-1 kill differential and a whopping 11,000 gold lead on Team Vitality. But more impressive than all of the match stats, and the time record, was SK Gaming stepping up big time against an opponent that on paper, they had almost no chance of beating.
With the win and a Schalke 04 victory over Rogue earlier in the day, SK Gaming earned one final match to decide whether or not they would be playing in the LEC Spring Split Playoffs. Which, riding on the momentum of their speedy victory, they won in a fairly clean fashion over Schalke 04, and are officially heading to their first ever LEC Split Playoff berth.
The beautiful competition of pro-level League of Legends is one of the most dramatic, and exciting Esports out there, and it’s games like today’s record breaker, or yesterday's clash of the titans between G2 and Fnatic, that truly work towards continuing to grow its dedicated fandom.