It finally happened.

Almost everyone believed the ROX Tigers would eventually fall, in spite of their overwhelming dominance of LoL Champions Korea Spring 2016. An undefeated season is incredibly difficult, especially with LCK's new league format and best-of-three series. Only one team has ever managed to have an undefeated split in Korea – SK Telecom T1 K in Champions Winter 2013-14.

The Tigers had a chance at it last year in LCK Spring 2015. They faltered after their Season IX IEM World Championship blunder, falling first to KT Rolster in Week 10, then to SK Telecom T1 in Week 12, and again in the Spring 2015 Final.

This past week, the Tigers once again fell short of perfection, dropping their first series of the season to Samsung Galaxy.

Story of the Week

ROX Tigers fall to Samsung Galaxy

Although a Tigers loss seemed inevitable, no one could have predicted it would come off of one of the strongest jungle performances in LCK to date. Said performance came from mid laner-turned-jungler Kang “Ambition” Chan-yong, who, though he's been improving, still often donates resources to opponents when he mistimes his enemy jungle invasions, making him an unlikely candidate to take down the Tigers.

Samsung Galaxy’s modus operandi this split has been a strong late game, powered by Ambition and aided by support Kwon “Wraith” Ji-min and a much improved Lee “CuVee” Seong-jin in the top lane. Ambition is one of Korea’s strongest jungle farmers, second only to Longzhu Gaming’s Lee “Crash” Dong-woo in both CS differential and gold differential at 10 minutes.

As a team, Samsung has the worst first turret rate (36 percent) and the third worst First Blood rate (43 percent), but their team statistics improve significantly as the game goes on. They have one of the strongest first Baron rates at 64 percent (tied for second-best in the region) and the fourth-best jungle control percentage at 51.3 percent. Lying in wait for opponents to make a mistake — and patiently scaling into the late game — is what earned Samsung their surprising fourth-place finish following the first round robin.

Their first game against ROX went as expected. Samsung’s delay-until-late-game strategy was foiled by the Tigers’ aggression and coordination. While the Tigers had some obvious lapses in vision and made some overaggressive moves, they always kept the game well in hand, just as they have in every other win this season.

Game 2 began with Ambition leading an invasion into the Tigers' blue buff, accompanied by AD carry Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in and Wraith. ROX’s Yoon “Peanut” Wang-ho and Kang “GorillA” Beom-hyeon stuck around to fight it off, and one failed Flash later both were dead — giving Ambition and Wraith a kill apiece. The play alleviated some of the heavy jungle pressure that Peanut is known for, and combined with Peanut's choice of the less-aggressive Gragas, this gave Ambition plenty of room to farm. Samsung played the game smartly and cleanly, recognizing their superior 5v5 teamfighting around mid laner Lee “Crown” Min-ho’s pocket Cassiopeia pick.

It didn’t look good for Ambition heading into Game 3. He took Kindred — a champion that he lost badly with in Week 8 against KT Rolster — against ROX’s Gragas, Azir and Trundle in the jungle, mid and support positions, respectively. All have displacements that knock players out of Lamb’s Respite, neutering one of Kindred’s most valuable teamfighting abilities.

However, Ambition dominated the jungle against Peanut in the third game, with his most impressive performance since swapping to the role in early 2015. He began with a three-buff start against Peanut’s Gragas, showcasing his intelligent counterjungle pathing while Peanut stuck to the top of the map, hoping to ensure that top laner Song “Smeb” Kyung-ho’s Graves could push aggressively against CuVee’s Gangplank. When Smeb tried an aggressive Teleport onto the minion wave, Ambition came in immediately to gank the enemy top and save CuVee from certain death. The move took the pressure off of CuVee, while giving Gangplank First Blood and an experience lead.

Once Smeb's Graves was back in lane, Ambition almost immediately returned to kill him again with a top-lane turret dive complete with a Kindred ultimate. Rather than allowing Smeb to take an easy lane win with Graves's pushing power, Ambition's aggression ensured that Samsung's late-game scaling top laner had the upper hand early, which proved deadly for the Tigers.

Ambition kept the snowball rolling with a dive onto ROX AD carry Kim “PraY” Jong-in in the bot lane, netting his team two more kills. From this point on, Samsung never looked back. Ambition was constantly diving for kills, furthering his gold lead and carrying Samsung to victory.

Runner up: the rise of CJ Entus

With wins over Kongdoo Monster, SBENU Sonicboom and Samsung Galaxy, CJ has afforded a two-week reprieve for their new mid laner Gwak “Bdd” Bo-seong to become accustomed to the LCK stage. Although their 2-0 sweep of Samsung now looks more impressive in light of Samsung's win over the ROX Tigers in their following series, SBENU and Kongdoo are the two worst teams in the league, and CJ still dropped a game against each of them.

CJ is now tied with Samsung for fourth place. They have a 7-5 series record and a 16-16 win-loss record, which is low for their standing. That puts the team in a precarious position, with slightly stronger opponents Longzhu and Jin Air on the horizon.

That being said, Bdd seems to be just what CJ Entus needed to become a legitimately strong team. Kim “Sky” Ha-neul obviously wasn’t performing well in the mid lane, and Bdd has done a remarkably good job of fitting into the team without changing their overall strategy. Most of CJ's resources still go to AD carry Ha “Kramer” Jong-hun, who is having a career year alongside resurgent veteran Hong “MadLife” Min-gi. CJ may be a bit too obvious about how their lane assignments are designed to funnel gold to Kramer — not to mention infuriating to watch as they wait for their AD carry to farm up — but their late-game teamfighting is even stronger with the addition of Bdd.

In spite of his prowess on assassins (especially Zed), Bdd has played Azir in the majority of his LCK games. He focuses on shifting opponents in teamfights so that Kramer can clean up, and in doing so has earned the highest kill participation of any player in Korea at 85.6 percent. Madlife has the second-highest at 80.1 percent. With these two guiding fights, and Kramer’s excellent positioning, CJ is definitely a team to look out for in this second round robin.

What to Watch:

Samsung Galaxy vs. ROX Tigers

Recommending this series is a no-brainer. Understanding where and why a strong team falters is always important, and with this series, Samsung Galaxy gives other Korean teams a blueprint to study — and the Tigers a list of areas to improve.

KT Rolster vs. Longzhu Gaming

North America’s NRG eSports may have brought the Zilean/Poppy combo to the world’s attention, but no team has seen success with it like KT Rolster. This week they pulled out the pair against Longzhu Gaming and didn't suffer a single death all game.

KT Rolster has struggled without top laner Kim “Ssumday” Chan-ho on a carry champion, but the Zilean/Poppy combined with a Vayne pick for AD carry No “Arrow” Dong-hyeon allowed for a more even spread of damage. The series was a welcome return to what KT does best, after a string of weird compositions that have either relied on Arrow to deal all the team's damage, or lacked damage completely.

Meanwhile, Longzhu continues their roster shuffle into the second round robin of LCK Spring 2016 with mixed results. Having abandoned their first round robin strategy of developing two independent lineups, they're still remarkably disorganized and unable to use the talent on their roster. Even when they have a lead, like in Game 2 against KT Rolster, they often fail to close out the game, either because their teamfights are uncoordinated or their members get caught out. Longzhu is now in seventh place with a 6-6 series record, with a lot of work left to be done in order to secure a Top 5 spot.

SK Telecom T1 vs. Afreeca Freecs

Fresh off of their undefeated performance at the IEM Season X World Championship in Katowice, all eyes were on SK Telecom T1. Their first match bacon home soil was against the Afreeca Freecs, a team that SKT has struggled to best — they lost 1-2 to the eighth-place Freecs in Week 6, capping off a disappointing first round robin.

SKT wins the series 2-1, but the Freecs don't make it easy. The narrow win leaves further doubts about SKT's current strength, even in light of their IEM World Championship victory. The LCK standings are very tight for middle-of-the-pack teams like SKT, who still seem to be finding their footing with new jungler Kang “Blank” Sun-gu.

Oddest moment of the week

“Bugsplat” error in Samsung Galaxy vs. ROX Tigers Game 3

In the first few minutes of Game 3 between Samsung Galaxy and the ROX Tigers, audiences were treated to a “bugsplat” error that turned out to be the transfer of an illegally downloaded movie file interrupting the broadcast. Let this be a lesson to all observers: don’t pirate movies while at work.

Week 9 MVPs

Kang “Ambition” Chan-yong

Who else could be the MVP of Week 9 but Ambition, who pulled out an unexpectedly fantastic performance against the best jungler in the region, ending the ROX Tigers’ undefeated streak. This game is a highlight of his quiet improvement throughout the split. It remains to be seen whether this new and crushing presence in the jungle will be seen again, since Ambition has been known for his inconsistency, but he was certainly the most impressive player of this past week.

More importantly, it seems like Ambition has found his home in the jungle as a counterjungling farmer. He doesn’t always need to be a strong duelist, like he was against ROX on Kindred; he can simply outfarm opponents on Nidalee and affect Samsung’s late game.

Runner-up: Ha “Kramer” Jong-hun

Kramer's detractors will point out that his team gives him the vast majority of CJ Entus’ resources. Kramer receives the largest share of his team’s gold of any player in Korea, at a whopping 27.4 percent.

However, he repays his team’s trust with consistent damage in teamfights. Even the recent addition of Bdd has served the team better when Bdd supports Kramer with zoning mages like Azir. At first, Kramer appeared to be a MadLife puppet, following the support’s instructions dutifully, but more recently he's really come into his own — proving he deserves all the gold that CJ gives him.

Emily Rand is a staff writer for theScore esports. Yes, she once said that "Ambition is not a jungler." You can follow her on Twitter.