The second match of the Quarterfinals was particularly noteworthy as Bilibili Gaming and Gen.G could be seen as rivals with a long history. Indeed, it was BLG that defeated Gen.G in the lower bracket of MSI 2023, subsequently taking down T1 and advancing to the finals against JD Gaming. In this matchup, both teams once again faced a do-or-die situation. This match was particularly crucial for Gen.G as they have not had a very favorable record against representatives from LPL.
In the first two games of the match, BLG surprisingly dominated Gen.G and took an early lead. However, with appropriate strategic adjustments and timely awakenings, Gen.G players managed to equalize and bring the match back to square one in the next two games. Nevertheless, thanks to their ability to capitalize on the opponents’ mistakes and perform significantly better, BLG emerged as the ultimate winners. The mistakes made by Gen.G were indeed critical, and SofM pointed this out during his co-stream.
According to SofM, one of the most frequently mentioned mistakes was Gen.G’s tendency to make extremely poor choices at crucial moments. In games 1 and 2, the team composition choices were very difficult to execute compared to their LPL representative opponents. Moving into game 5, while BLG made mistakes right from the start, Gen.G once again faltered at the decisive phase, from the fight situation without Doran’s Mega Gnar to the decision for Kai’Sa to build AP (which has been very ineffective at this year’s Worlds).
Thanks to Gen.G’s somewhat “self-sabotaging” factors, BLG seized many opportunities to finish the match. In fact, if they played precisely and focused on destroying towers, BLG could have ended the game during the very first push into the enemy base.
With this elimination, Gen.G extends their streak of poor performances at international League of Legends events. However, they can only blame themselves for having held many advantages yet allowing the opponents to reclaim everything. In fact, Gen.G could have been swept if BLG had played meticulously in game 3.