On day 34 of the 2022 LCK Summer split, Liiv SANDBOX defeated DRX 2-1 in the first match of the day. With this victory, LSB earned their ninth match victory of the split, threatening DWG KIA’s 3rd place position in the standings.

After the match, LSB’s bot laner Lee “Prince” Chae-hwan joined Inven for a post-match interview to talk about the match. He started the interview by talking about the feedback from their loss against Nongshim RedForce in their previous match.

“Our match against NS was a showcase of us making mistakes and the areas that we need to improve. From not being wary of the enemy jungler to making wrong individual decisions, the areas that we needed to work on were very evident.”

Zeri’s a champion with a very high win rate in the LCK at the moment. On the champion, he commented,

“It’s really hard to talk about the champion based on just one match, because there are so many other factors to talk about, such as team composition and how the draft goes. Tonight, there were picks that we prepared to play against Zeri, and were prepared to take her for ourselves if she was left open, so that’s why we let her through in the draft tonight in game 1 and 2.”

To answer DRX’s Zeri in game 2, LSB drafted the classic hyper-carry bot lane, Lulu-Kog’Maw. However, they failed to pick up the win in game 2. 

“I don’t believe that drafting Lulu-Kog, nor how we played the two champions were why we lost that game. There’s a lot of reasons behind that loss, but because we were going to pick blue side in game 3, we kept the feedback to a minimum.”

In game 3, Prince’s Sivir played against Kim “Deft” Hyuk-kyu’s Vayne. Prince commented the following on the matchup.

“It’s been widely considered that Vayne has the advantage in that matchup for a long time; I really didn’t anticipate Deft to pick Vayne that game. After she was drafted, I immediately compared our comp to theirs and thought that I’d be able to do well in that game. Our macro was based around exploiting her weaknesses."

In that game, LSB gained a lot of advantages through a lane swap they initiated. Prince told Inven about why the team made that decision.

“It may have looked like our bot lane was trying to avoid the laning phase against her. However, we had a wave built up in the bot lane, and saw an angle to take the fight, so we decided to rotate top, take the Rift Herald, and push through the top lane. While we were aware of the disadvantages of the Sivir vs Vayne matchup, the lane swap wasn’t initiated because of that matchup.”

With LSB’s victory over DRX, they now have the same number of wins as DWG KIA, who sits just above them in the standings. Ironically, their next match is against DWG KIA, which will most likely decide who’ll be in third place. 

“In terms of macro, DWG KIA is a team that can even be considered top 2 in the LCK. I think we’ll have to strengthen our macro and prepare against theirs. Because it’s nearly the end of the regular split, each match matters a lot, so our fans get really disappointed when we lose. We’re working our hardest at the moment, so please continue to support us.”