▲ Photo by Oshin Villa Tudayan for Riot Games

100 Thieves' spring season has come to a close. 100 Thieves secured 3rd place in the 2020 League of Legends Championship Series Spring Split, and after losing its first match to 1st seed Cloud9, was eliminated from the 2020 LCS Spring Playoffs by 5th seed TSM in a rollercoaster ride of a five-game series. TSM Mid Laner Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg earned Player of the Series honors for his incredible performance, especially on Zoe.

100 Thieves must settle for a finish outside of the top 4, but its spring of 2020 was far more successful than its 2019, in which the team missed both the 2019 LCS Spring and Summer Playoffs. 100 Thieves AD Carry Sun "Cody Sun" Li-Yu spoke to Inven Global's Nick Geracie to talk about the close series and address the 100 Thieves fanbase.

Cody Sun, that was a hard-fought series. What are your initial feelings coming out of such a narrow loss?

I'm pretty sad about the loss. I just feel like I could have played better in the series. I feel like I have higher expectations of myself, and the fans and my team also have higher expectations of me, so I feel like whenever I make a crucial mistake, I feel like it shouldn't ever happen.

Honestly, I'm a little surprised to hear you say this. I feel like your individual performance was extremely impressive. What do you think you could have done better?

I think the big one was definitely around the Dragon pit when both teams were trying to secure the Dragon Soul. I pretty much got one-shotted by Bjergsen's Zoe. Obviously, he played it really well — I saw him coming, but when he used his Paddle Star over the wall, it was from the Fog of War, so I couldn't see it and dodge it in time with my Flash. Of course, I didn't expect to get one-shot, but I could have positioned a lot better there.

For the rest of the series, I think there were a lot of deaths that I could have avoided to give us a higher chance of winning. I do think that one of the positives in the series was how well we played as a team in every game we won. We came together as a team, and I think we showcased pretty good teamwork. I think I just didn't have as clean of a performance as I would have liked, so I just have to work on that.

TSM's AD Carry Kasper "Kobbe" Kobberup didn't exactly have a clean performance either; I think it's fair to say he was challenged by you. What are your thoughts on the bot lane matchup against TSM?

I think TSM's bot lane played a pretty solid series. They didn't really make too many mistakes, and TSM as a team doesn't focus on their bot lane too much, so they just kind of did their jobs in the game. TSM mostly has a top or mid focused game plan, so I think that their bot duo had a solid performance.

During one of our conversations last year, you talked about how much you've grown as a person and a teammate. How do you feel you're handling this loss compared to a playoff loss on 100 Thieves back in 2018, for example?

As I've played a lot of different competitive games, I've gained a lot of experience in different areas that I use now. I definitely think that it was a lot harder for me to find the important things I needed to improve on after the day of a loss. I would be pretty emotionally devastated by losing in general, whether it would be a regular split game or a post-season match.

The only thing that's stayed the same for me between now and then is that when I do lose, that sinking feeling is always there. It truly blows. I can deal with it better now, but it still hits you really hard. You just have to focus on improving when you have a big loss like this.