Today we preview the first LCS quarterfinal match between TSM and Clutch. Which League of Legends team will move closer to a championship?

The underdog versus the old guard was the story when TSM faced Clutch Gaming in the 2018 LCS Spring Playoffs. Clutch ultimately prevailed, dealing the first major blow to one of the oldest North American League of Legends organization’s legacies. Now, in the 2019 Summer Playoffs, Clutch is trying to repeat the magic while TSM is hoping to write a different story.

Many of the faces are different, with TSM jettisoning over half of that line-up and Clutch returning only one player from that starting line-up. To call this a rivalry match would be somewhat hyperbolic, but rest assured both teams are aware of the histories. Which team is favored going into the quarterfinal match-up?

In this corner…

TSM, the presumptive favorites entering this match-up. Finishing the year with a 10-8 record, this was a team most expected to challenge for a top two or three position after being only one game away from defeating Team Liquid in the Spring Finals.

Down the stretch, TSM slumped hard, losing some very winnable games against teams like OpTic and 100 Thieves, while winning games against teams like Golden Guardians and Echo Fox (who missed playoffs) that most observers believe they didn’t deserve to win.

TSM is, quite frankly, not a good team. They have the second-slowest average time in games they win (the slowest is Echo Fox, who only won four games) and their pace is behind most other teams by about four minutes. They are the only playoff team that averages a gold deficit at 15 minutes, which is why they have the worst early game ranking of any team in the playoffs according to Oracle’s Elixir.

In the other corner…

We have Clutch Gaming, a team I’ve had much higher hopes for than most other commentators. Clutch has been a team that’s shown the ability to do a lot of things right, but never quite been able to put it together. They’re a team with a lot of good (or underrated) parts that seem to have hit their stride entering playoffs.

Clutch won four of their last six games down the stretch – admittedly, against some weak competition – to secure their playoff spot. They may have lost to Liquid and Cloud9, but Clutch beat out both Golden Guardians and 100 Thieves in their last week of play, showing that this team can stand up in high-pressure games.

In contrast to TSM, Clutch has shown themselves to be a pretty decent early game team, ranked comparably to top teams like C9 and CLG. They average the second-highest gold lead at 15 of all playoff teams and have some of the best vision control of teams remaining. Their problem, unfortunately, is the late game, as they are the worst of the playoff teams in the late game as rated by Oracle’s Elixir.