Evil Geniuses have ended Cloud9's post-season run in a clean sweep in the penultimate lower bracket match of the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs. While C9 head home, EG will move on to face Team Liquid in the lower bracket final to see who meets 100 Thieves in the finals.

Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses had relatively similar post-season trajectories, albeit with different expectations attached. As the #4 playoffs seed, Evil Geniuses were expected to lose against #1 seed Team Liquid in their first match of the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs, and while they did, the fight they put up forced the series to go the distance before TL triumphed.

C9, on the other hand, came into their first match as the #2 seed favored against #3 seed 100 Thieves before getting absolutely shellacked by the defending LCS champions in a clean sweep. C9 and EG both won their lower bracket matches in a 3-0 win over #6 seed Golden Guardians and a 3-1 over #5 seed FlyQuest, respectively, which set up a lower bracket match-up between them with a top 3 ticket on the line. 

Evil Geniuses started the series by exploiting Cloud9 top laner Park "Summit" Woo-tae in a similar way 100 Thieves had earlier in the LCS Spring Playoffs, but the crucial difference in the series — whether in the case of the top lane or not — was the superior jungle-mid play by Kacper "Inspired" Słoma and Joseph "jojopyun" Joon Pyun over Robert "Blaber" Huang and Ibrahim "Fudge" Allami. EG bot laner Kyle "Danny" Sakamaki also had a transcendent performance on Zeri in all three games.

Cloud9 will have to settle for fourth place in the 2022 LCS Spring Playoffs, while Evil Geniuses will travel to NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas to try and take on Team Liquid for a spot in the finals against 100 Thieves this Saturday.