3 questions for CLG and Team Liquid ahead of their League of Legends semifinal showdown

All four semifinal teams from the North American League of Legends Championship Series will play in Las Vegas next week, but which will be playing for the title and which will be playing for third place? We’ll find out this weekend, starting with Counter Logic Gaming vs. Team Liquid Saturday.

CLG earned a first-round bye in the playoffs thanks to a 13-5 record in the regular season, locking down the No. 2 seed in North America. CLG is the defending North American champion, defeating TSM in the finals last split and becoming the first team other than TSM or Cloud9 to ever win the NA LCS.

Liquid entered the playoffs as the fourth seed after a whirlwind final week sent it shooting up the standings. The hype train is real for Liquid, especially after a dominating 3-0 sweep of NRG in the quarterfinal round. Liquid’s never made it past the semifinal round, however -- the “Curse” has moved from always finishing in fourth place to never finishing above third. With a young roster that seems to be gelling more by the week, is this the year that changes?

These two teams met twice this split, splitting the season series, 1-1. CLG won the meeting in Week 2, while Liquid won in Week 8.

The best-of-five series will take place Saturday, April 9, beginning at 3 p.m. ET. All games will be streamed live at lolesports.com.

CLG has shown a preference to letting Darshan split push with champions like Fiora or Jax. Even in the last week of the regular season, when basically every other top laner had moved on to straight up tanks, Darshan played Graves and Gnar. But tanks are definitely the flavor of the top lane currently, and in a best-of-five series we’ll see if CLG changes up his champion pool a bit. He’s played Poppy and Ekko already this season -- two currently popular tank picks -- but has not yet played the likes of Trundle and Maokai.

It’s pretty clear that Piglet was the best marksman in the region this season. But Stixxay’s had some standout performances in his first LCS split, specifically on Ezreal and Kalista. If he’s able to lock in either of those champions, it could be key to the matchup.

Interestingly enough, in both matchups between the two this split, the marksman that did less damage to champions won the game.

Once thought to be the weak point of CLG’s roster, Xmithie has performed quite well on champions like Nidalee and Udyr but not quite as well on common picks like Gragas, Elise and Rek’Sai. He led all North American junglers in CS difference at 10 minutes this split, but is on the lower end statistically in damage dealt and warding.

Meanwhile, Dardoch continued his fantastic rookie split with a strong performance in the quarterfinal round against NRG, even building full-AD Lee Sin in a game that he barely missed out on two pentakills. If Dardoch can get his hands on Lee Sin, it could spell trouble for CLG, but it’s not like he has a terribly limited champion pool anyway.

Team Liquid has three rookies on the team this split, including shotcallers Matt and Dardoch. After some shaky decisions in the early part of the season, the team really started to play more cohesively towards the end of the split. But playing against one of North America’s best and most experienced shotcallers in Aphromoo is a different story.

‘We’re hiding everything,’ Dardoch told me when I brought up if Liquid didn’t show their full hand today versus NRG. ‘We played our least favorite champions this week. I played Gragas. I played full damage Lee as a joke.’

Matt said the team was “let down” by how convincingly Liquid beat NRG. But CLG’s an entirely different story. Will we finally see Liquid flex its picking muscles a bit more, or will that be saved once again for a potential finals matchup with Immortals?

Previously on CLG’s Challenger Series team, Lourlo replaced the retired Quas as Liquid’s top laner before the split. After struggling early on champions like Gnar, he came into his own by the end of the season on tanky champions like Poppy and Nautilus. Top tank Ekko was a successful pick for him last week as well, and Darshan’s played the champion this split too. Expect Poppy and Ekko to be high priority picks.

Keeping this matchup close could be key to Liquid’s chances -- the massive top lane gold differences in both matchups this split were instrumental to their respective teams’ victories.