Evil Geniuses announce Kumo as new top laner

Evil Geniuses has announced on Twitter Colin “Kumo” Zhao will become their top laner for the 2020 League Of Legends season. 

This announcement comes as the new team is only missing a mid laner, and three of the four players are from Cloud9. Who is up for the spot for midlane is not known at this time. Kumo joins Dennis “Svenskeren” Johnsen, Tristan “Zeyzal” Stidam, and Bae “Bang” Jun-Sik on the roster.

Kumo is fairly new to the scene, beginning his pro play in December 2016 when he joined now-disbanded team Team Exile Surge, which he quickly left. In February of 2017 he joined Relentless Gaming and in November 2017 he joined Behavior Check, another team in which he did not play with.

In December 2017, under the name “League” he was drafted by Cloud9 and began with their Academy roster. His name then changed to Shiro.

Fast forward to Summer 2019, week 5 of the split, when Eric “Licorice” Ritchie announced he’d been injured and Shiro, now named Kumo, would be stepping in.

At this point, Kumo had never been on the main stage except for the end of the 2018 Summer Split, when Cloud9 decided to put their whole Academy team out against Clutch Gaming, but there were no stakes. Cloud9 were already going to Worlds at that point.

This was a game when people started to notice Kumo, when he played against Jung “Impact” Eon-yeong from Team Liquid, and solo killed him, which is no mean feat.

Although he had help from the tower, Kumo was not exactly at full health and Impact was not ready for all the tower shots. This, coupled with good plays by Svenskeren and Yasin “Nisqy” Dinçer, helped Cloud9 score a rare win against Team Liquid.

Speaking to Upcomer, Kumo praised the Cloud9 organisation for how they develop talent. 

“I think it just has to do with how well Cloud9 develops all their players," Kumo said. "They put a lot of time and energy into developing our mechanics while also learning how to play macro. We just learn how to play the game. Everyone on Cloud9 really wants to win and wants to improve.”

Cloud9 must be decent at developing new talent and Evil Geniuses is apparently looking to capitalize on that front. Needless to say, they are certainly smart for grabbing Kumo, and it will be exciting to see what he will bring to the main stage and to the team in general in 2020.