Kwangdong Freecs ends T1’s LCK winning streak with a big upset

T1’s win streak has ended. Long live the win streak.

After winning 24 LCK best-of-three matches in a row, T1 has taken its first domestic best-of-three loss of the year. Surprisingly, Kwangdong Freecs were the giant slayers and took down T1 throughout three intense games. 

Not only is this a great confidence booster for Kwangdong Freecs and an important win to stay in playoffs contention, it’s also the end of one of the most impressive LCK storylines of all time: T1’s dominance run. 

Kwangdong Freecs didn’t look like the team that would end the T1 streak. Their Game 1’s loss against T1’s dynamic play was uninspiring. 

However, things slowly turned around as former T1 bot laner Park “Teddy” Jin-seong showed up big on Senna for Kwangdong Freecs. The veteran bot laner didn’t let the T1 young guns bully him and led KDF to a dominant 31-minute win. 

T1 has been in a deciding third game before, but this time went unlike all Game 3 outcomes in 2022. Despite a close game from start to finish, T1 came up short against all expectations.

At the center of T1’s bane, Kwangdong Freecs top laner Kim “Kiin” Gi-in turned the clock back to 2018 as he popped off on Gnar. It was too much for T1 to handle, and it resulted in the Nexus explosion that no T1 fan wanted to see. 

With this 2-1 loss, T1’s domestic winning streak has ended, and the team looks mortal in the LCK once again.