After 100 Thieves finished 3rd in the 2022 LCS Spring Split, head coach Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu spoke to Inven Global about Dignitas QNTMPAY's ownage of his team, the absence of top laner Milan "Tenacity" Oleksij from the starting LCS roster, and the LCS Spring Playoffs.

100 Thieves is 0-4 against Dignitas QNTMPAY in 2022. What has led to this trend?

I mean, earlier in the season, we were struggling a lot. We could have lost to any team, and the team we lost to mostly just happened to be Dignitas.

Today, we were trying to pick some confidence picks so that before playoffs we were checking out the last pieces of our drafts in terms of whether things were worth it, if we could win, or if there were things we could improve within this type of team composition and the champions. At the end of the day, we lost the game, but it shouldn't really matter as long as we got something from it.

You did not ban Jarvan IV against jungler Kim "River" Dong-woo, which, before this loss, was used to defeat 100 Thieves in two of the three matches DIG triumphed over your team this year. Did you feel like you could answer River's J4 or were you simply challenging your team before the start of the post-season?

River is a good jungler, especially on J4, but on other picks like Volibear he has been playing really well. In the draft, we had the option to either pinch out the enemy bot lane or the enemy jungle.

Every team kind of decides on one lane to play through against Dignitas and we decided to prioritize bot lane over the jungler. We kind of expected them to ban junglers as well, so if we started banning junglers, there would be five or six jungler champions banned for this game. That could result in something crazy.

Yesterday, 100 Thieves had an impressive win against Cloud9. It felt like your team was the first to make their top laner Park "Summit" Woo-tae seemingly mortal. What was your gameplan heading into the match against C9, and was your previous experience as head coach of their organization help you in this matchup?

Not really, it's been a long time since I've been at Cloud9 and they have a new team with new members. We were preparing against them based on what we saw in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, and figuring out how we wanted to play against them based on that.

We haven't seen Tenacity start for 100 Thieves since the Lock In. What has led to his absence from the starting roster?

He has mainly been grinding in solo queue and trying to fit in with our teammates and stuff, but for now, Tenacity really hasn't had a chance to play on stage when our team is struggling and Closer and Ssumday are both playing really well. If we were in a good spot, we could have tried something for comfort to start him, but right now, we were trying to recover our form before playoffs, so it's kind of unlucky for him.

Ssumday has had arguably his best split in the LCS this spring. Is there something you feel he changed in his competitive approach that has led to his elevated form in 2022?

I've only worked with Ssumday for two splits so I cannot really tell what has changed for him. After Worlds 2021, I strongly believed that Ssumday could perform really well in the next season, and he did. I don't know what else to say. *laughs*

Despite early stumbles in the Spring Split, 100 Thieves have finished in 3rd place. How are you feeling about the LCS Spring Playoffs?

We're still very confident regarding our playoffs run. We just need to check out what we have to improve and what we have to avoid during playoffs. We need to understand our team better to play better — that's where we are, so as long as we have a good practice week, we should be fine.

Is there anything you want to say to the 100 Thieves fans before the start of the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs?

Thanks for rooting for us. We might have had a rough early season, but we are here despite losing today. I don't think you guys should worry too much about it. We are trying comfort things out and it didn't work out; it is what it is, but we're still putting in lots of effort.