Griffin booted from the LCK after losing to Sandbox Gaming

In another upset victory, Sandbox Gaming defeated Griffin today with a score of 2-0. This occurred in the lower bracket of the league’s summer promotion series. It’s been a hard year for Griffin, especially considering how well they performed last year.

Changing up the roster

The Korean League of Legends team went through something of a major roster change in the 2019 off-season. During this, they replaced two of their players in addition to coaching staff. Top laner Sword, jungler Tarvan, and ADC Viper were the last three standing in the lineup, whereas Doran, Chovy, and Lehends changed teams.

It’s been something of a rough year for all of us, including Griffin. The team ended up finishing dead last during the 2020 LCK Spring Split. Their final series record stood at 5-13 with a 16-29 game record. When the summer promotion tournament started, they ended up losing back-to-back best-of-three series to Seorabeol Gaming and now Team Sandbox. That’s the last chance they had to make an impact on the tournament.

Controversy for Griffin

During previous years, Griffin placed first and second in the league and was considered among the best teams in the world. They qualified as South Korea’s second seed at the 2019 League of Legends World Championship. However, their time at worlds was overshadowed following the controversy last year with coach Kim “cvMax” Dae-ho and his departure from the organization. As a result, the team’s standing suffered. The controversy involved the former-head-coach verbally abusing team players, as well as a situation with a contract proposal for former Griffin player (and underage minor) Kanavi.

This isn’t all that detracts from Griffin’s recent performance. Mid-laner Chovy’s move to Gen.G, which was a huge blow to the team’s dynamic. Griffin was best known for their dominant jungle and mid synergy. Tarzan and Chovy ended up carrying the team with extreme regularity. But now with Chovy’s replacement, Son “Ucal” Woo-hyeon, the results haven’t been quite the same.

Chovy, Doran, and Kanavi, however, have found great success in their latest endeavors. Chovy placed second during this year’s LCK playoffs, with Doran coming in third. Kanavi managed to achieve MVP status in the LPL and is now planning to play Top Esports in the grand finals of the Chinese league.

A look at the match

Today’s matchup between Griffin and Sandbox ultimately came down to mechanics. Despite Griffin’s solid pick and draft, they failed to execute throughout both games.

Here are videos that show the two games.

Next up

With this win under their belt, Sandbox now moves on to play Seorabeol on Thursday, April 30, for a place in the LCK Summer Split.

Ryan Goodrich

Ryan has been writing since long before he could even write. He's written resumes, software user guides, consumer electronic reviews, and myriad web content spanning a variety of industries. But now he's writing about video games, which is much more interesting.

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