League of Legends news » KT plays methodical vs. TSM

Team SoloMid became the first North American team to suffer the agony of defeat at the 2015 World Championship after losing to KT Rolster on Friday. After Day 1's surprises, the opening game of Day 2 went about as you'd expect between these two teams -- low kill counts, good vision control, and the sure-fire strategy for international tournaments: Camp Marcus "Dyrus" Hill.

Score and KT support player Piccaboo have been the keys to KT's success because of their ganks, jungle invades, and vision control, and Friday's match against TSM was no different. "We didn't plan on camping Dyrus, but it just kind of happened that way," Score said. "After our scrims the past few days, we realized we wanted to prioritize the early game. We saw TSM going for an invade on Blue side, so we invaded their Blue side."

It just so happened that KT managed to get a free kill on Dyrus in the process. "Dyrus was kind of wandering around and didn't really know where to go or what to do. That was the main factor to flip the game for us."

Throughout the mid game, TSM found themselves getting caught out and lacking a lot of direction, apart from Bjergsen. TSM's mid laner presented a problem that KT didn't try to mitigate, and instead decided to focus on getting their side lanes ahead. "Bjergsen is a really good player, but because we focused more on the side lanes, mid was relatively open," Score said. He then laughed and added, "To win the game, we had to sacrifice Nagne."

Good thing it worked.

Despite Nagne's noble sacrifice to the the demigod from Denmark, KT capitalized on TSM's  mistakes to take key objectives -- like when they caught Santorin in the mid game and turned it into two tower kills. And TSM's ill-advised Baron attempt that lead to a Baron of their own.

Score credits their strong play down the stretch to their improved mindset. "I think as a team, we've grown a lot," Score said. "Our mental capacity to focus after mistakes has improved. I think if we had a bad early game like this [earlier in the season], we wouldn't have done so well. But now we're able to overcome those mistakes."

KT will need their mental fortitude to overcome their extremely challenging Group D opponents. "LGD's main strength is the bottom lane with Imp and Pyl. Our main tactic is to not let him grow to much and get ahead."

And Origen?

"Since we're in Europe [Origen's home ground], that aspect is in Origen's favor. But otherwise, we have experience beating them in the past [in scrims] and aren't scared of them."

After Origen's upset against LGD Gaming, maybe they should be.

You can find out if KT can bring down LGD Saturday at 16:00 Central European Summer Time. And for more coverage from the 2015 World Championship, head over to Lolesports.com.