After a rough spring split and some roster changes in between with the full roster announcement earlier on Thursday , I talked to JungleJuice, Academy Director of 100 Thieves and got insight on the roster changes and where he wants the team to be by the end of the summer split.

100 Thieves News: For the people that don’t keep up with the academy team as much as the LCS team, could you provide a brief introduction about yourself and what you do?

JungleJuice: My name is Joseph Jang, I’m the academy director here at 100 Thieves. As a director I serve two primary functions on 100 Thieves, mainly I am the head coach that decides on staffing, roster, and the general direction of our academy organization. This is important because our direction has to be structured around what our LCS counterpart wants to do with academy as it varies split to split. Also I do most of the strategic coaching on 100 Thieves academy as well as offering a hand to the main team when available.

What are your feelings on 100 Academy’s performance in the spring split, and what are your thoughts transitioning into the summer split?

JungleJuice: I think we definitely underperformed. There were two things that i definitely did not forsee or underestimated going into the split. First, I didn’t think Levi’s visa would take as long as it did and therefore it delayed our practice before the split began pretty heavily so that was extremely difficult for us at the time. Secondly, having multiple rookies and our rookie jungler sub at the time was difficult because our baseline individually needed a lot of tuning before we could actually tackle team problems. However, I do think it’s extremely easy to make excuses about poor performances but I believe having an attitude of taking over things that ARE in your control is and always will be the healthiest mindset to have. So despite those hardships we should have done better.

There have been two roster changes with the team going into the summer split with Brandini in the top lane and Stunt on support. Why were these two picked/how do you feel about the two as you have spent some time with them?

JungleJuice: Brandini just made sense for us logistically. In spring split, we had Kaizen/Max Waldo on our academy roster as our top laner who was a complete rookie coming from scouting grounds. My plan was to groom the rookie in time so that we could make him LCS feasible in 2 – 3 years time. However, I completely underestimated how fast rookies caught onto the different nuances involved in competitive play: discipline, strategic knowledge, communication ability, performing under pressure, and ability to work with others. With Max, he had an incredible work ethic that I admired but I realized that we needed someone with a much higher baseline of experience in order for our roster to work on macro/team issues as well as being a much more realistic LCS candidate since he is by far the best academy top laner.



With Whyin, it was definitely a much harder choice to make. There were two things that ultimately made us make our decision, the first being Levi. Levi brings an incredible amount of gameplay and ability making to the team but while he is slowly becoming fluent in english, we definitely felt a lack of coordination because of our communication deficiencies in the spring split. We felt that with Whyin, we tried to bring on those responsibilities to him but we fell really short and needed someone with a lot more experience who could lead the team in and out of the game. Secondly, we felt that individually we were stagnating in terms of improvement and therefore the transition to Stunt made the most sense for our roster.

What do you ideally want 100 Academy to place this upcoming split?

JungleJuice: Going into this split the 100 Thieves organization really bought into the idea of grooming the best talent available not in LCS, not only to see what we could do with the team, but also to see how much our LCS team could benefit from having a stronger counterpart to practice with. Therefore we have strong, if not the strongest players in a lot of our roles, and we have no VISA or any other issues outside of our control this time around. So there can’t be any excuses this split. We are the best team on paper going into the split and I expect us to meet those expectations as a team and as for the individuals I want to see at least some of them on an LCS team by next year.

Is there anything you would like to say to the fans before you go?

JungleJuice: Thank you so much for supporting 100 Thieves so far. As you can tell from The Heist, Matt (Nadeshot), and the rest of our staff and players we really buy into the idea of fostering and improving the esports community on a day to day basis. I have never seen so much work dedicated in a video series as much as the Heist, management that’s so thoughtful and understanding of the staff and players, and an owner who genuinely loves and wants to be fully part of the League of Legends community. Also our merchandise is and will continue to be dope so thats also a major plus.

Follow JungeJuice on Twitter if you haven’t already, and be sure to support 100 Academy when their split starts in 2 weeks!