SK Telecom T1 defeated the ROX Tigers at New York’s Madison Square Garden 3-2 on Friday night, claiming one of the two spots in the grand finals.

SKT has become the first team to reach three finals of the League of Legends World Championship and awaits the winner of tonight’s match between Samsung Galaxy and H2K. Despite some stiff opposition from the Tigers in the form of support Miss Fortune and constant jungle pressure, SKT was able to beat them back with interesting drafting choices and an unexpected yet dominating Nidalee performance.

Support Lee “Wolf” Jae-Wan and junglers Kang “Blank” Sun-Gu and Bae “Bengi” Seong-Ung held a news conference with the assembled media to talk about their dramatic victory. Here are some of the highlights of what they said:

Wolf on facing Miss Fortune support: “I actually met a lot of Miss Fortune support in Korean solo queue so I thought I’d be OK, but she was difficult to deal with when laning with an Ashe. I thought that in Game 2 there were some mistakes, so I said in Game 3 that I can deal with it but I couldn’t. The toughest things were mostly because the combo of the Ashe ultimate mixed with MF’s ultimate.”

Blank on the close semifinals: “I think that my team’s laners are the best in the world, and although many people think that we are bad with Nidalee, I hope today’s games have proven otherwise. When we won I was incredibly happy and fought back some tears. When we got Nidalee, I thought we would win because Bengi is really good on her, people just didn’t know it. At Game 5 I was confident that we would not lose since best-of series is our strong suit.”

Bengi on the possibility of a Nidalee pick against any other team in the tournament: “If our opponents left her open, I think we would have prioritized her, but we have a team motto of sorts that if the first pick is yours you have to perform, so there was some deep thought. Since Peanut is so good on her, we took her away.”

Wolf on playing angry: “I think my rage this time around was double the usual, and I think I should unleash that in the next games as well, and since MF is a fresh pick and she’s not hard to play, I intend to return the favor with her.”

Wolf on potential pocket picks: “Honestly I didn’t give it that much thought but after today, I think it’ll be some motivation for me to have an open mind on picks. Even though I didn’t have anything planned I will give it some thought.”

Blank on his relationship with Bengi: “Honestly during this worlds, Bengi and I sat side by side so we got closer and we also shared a lot of info together in order to make each other better players. I think we have a great relationship with only upsides.”

Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games