EPTThe question is not is Coach Park good enough. The question also is not is CJ Entus good enough. The true question is, how good will they become? The fabled Coach Park was hired last season by a drowning EGTL, the team's last chance of putting in a performance worthy of a team that was participating in Proleague. The turnaround was abrupt - before, the team sat in last place, struggling to put together enough wins to pull an ace match let alone a win. After he arrived, however, the EGTL house underwent a rapid transformation into a serious environment and the team gained steam, almost taking 6th place away from a struggling CJ Entus at the end of the season. A ragtag band of Korean warriors brought together under the banner of foreign participation in Proleague were turned into a ruthlesss group of winners that were able to give the best teams of the season a run for their money in the closing weeks of Proleague.
Given the improvement that Coach Park brought upon EGTL in just a few months, one wonders what he could do given a few months before the start of Proleague itself. A bare hint of what is to come can be found when one examines the numbers of CJ Entus players, and looks at the recent actions of the team itself. The first key to notice is that CJ Entus has begun a massive campaign of fan interaction. The CJ Entus-yon Pop video was the first signal of Coach Park's changes. Following this, CJ Entus also ran a cosplay competition, where Madlife, Flame, and Effort were voted to cosplay game-related characters (Effort Hydralisk incoming). One more change, not immediately noticed as strange, is the massive increase in participation of various events from CJ Entus players. Notably, Red Bull Battlegrounds NY, IEM Singapore, and Dreamhack Winter saw a flood of CJ Entus players. Bunny Sora, Bbyong, Trust, Effort, sKyHigh, Hush/Bong, herO, Songduri, Rare, and Hydra all showed up for Red Bull NYC qualifiers, and all of those except Hush also tried to qualify for IEM Singapore. Dreamhack Winter qualifiers were attempted by sKyHigh, Bbyong, Bunny, Trust, Hush, Effort, Hydra, and Songduri.
Of course, increased participation doesn't mark any sort of important increase in skill in players - instead, we should look to the numbers. The most important of these are the current Front Five for CJ Entus - Bbyong, herO[join], Hydra, Effort, and Sora, who basically mark the CJ Entus A+ team. First among equals is herO[join], the almost undisputed ace of CJ Entus and one of the hottest players coming into Proleague. herO[join], before Coach Park's arrival, was not a shabby performer at all. He had a 54% winrate in games and a 57% winrate in matches, and, as Khaldor proclaimed just last night, anyone over 50% winrate in Korea is a very good player. Of course, this would be good on its own, but when you look at his Post-Park stats, he becomes one of the best in the world. His game winrate jumps from 54% to 69%, and his match winrate goes from 57% to a ridiculously high 83%. In the same period, Dear was 64%/67%, and Rain was 59%/66%. In essence, herO[join] has been the best performing Protoss player in the last five months, outdoing Dear and Rain's performances in WCS and Blizzcon. He's beaten Dear, Maru, Sora, San, DRG, MVP, Bomber, Dream, Jaedong, soO, Polt, Stats, Symbol, and Rain in matches in the last two months alone. On a massive tear coming into Proleague, it would be a shock if he did anything except dominate the coming season, especially given his prowess in PvP.
The next man up for CJ Entus is Hydra, the cyclops zerg. Hydra wasn't an especially prominent player in the Korean scene prior to Coach Park's arrival - he was a strong player, especially in ZvP, but he never seemed to have the spark of power that would make him an ace-category zerg like Roro or Soulkey. In truth, he was hardly impressive, with a 48% game winrate and a 49% match winrate. However, the transformation since Coach Park's arrival has been both swift and significant. Hydra has shot up to a 63% winrate in games and 74% in matches, with wins over players like Squirtle, Rain, Classic, Dear, and Scarlett. With the mass of Protoss in Proleague, Hydra's ~65% winrate will serve him well as he squares off again with the talented masses of PvProleague.
The third big man on campus for CJ Entus is the ex-retiree Effort. No stranger to pressure in the booth, Effort has a storied history as a Brood War player and looks set to make a name for himself as a solid if not exceptional player in Starcraft 2. Effort is, perhaps, one of the CJ Entus players that has seen the least improvement percentage-wise after Coach Park's hiring. However, unlike Hydra, Effort did not really need any sort of help from Coach Park to be good. He held a solid 60% winrate in games and 58% in matches, which basically flips around to 58% and 61% in games and matches after the hiring of Coach Park. Effort struggled after the switch to HotS like many of the CJ players, and though his game appears to have cleaned up, it will take some high-profile games in Proleague before it can be truly determined whether he is as good as his previous successes suggest he is (or if he can get even better).
Sora doesn't really need an introduction. He comes fourth in the line of CJ Entus rookies that have made big splashes, but, unlike Trust, Hush, and Bunny, he has not faded almost immediately after his debut games. Before Coach Park, Sora had played a grand total of 18 recorded games and went 9-9 in games and 4-4 in matches, displaying an extremely exciting winrate of 50%. It is not certain whether or not his breakout is a direct effect of Coach Park's arrival, but we can say with certainty that after the arrival of Coach Park, Sora exploded onto the scene and went played 110 games, going 73-37 for a 66% winrate and a 72% winrate in matches overall. While much of Sora's recent wins have come from foreigners in WCG, he has beaten Dream, Life, Parting, Revival, Impact, Bbyong, and Curious in recent times. Sora's arrival has been an incredible relief to the lineup of CJ Entus, giving them what appears to be a reliable second Protoss player in addition to bolstering their lineup to solidify their place as one of the best teams, whether in a bo5 or bo7 format.
Finally, Bbyong rounds out the core lineup of CJ Entus. Bbyong has been called a successor to Virus for quite some time - he showed mediocre performance that was just enough for him to stay borderline Code S, and nothing very flashy or exceptional. In the previous Proleague season, he had shown flashes of talent in TvP, with occasionally funky builds being used to throw off his opponents and give him a big advantage. In his mediocre days, Bbyong was very much mediocre, with a 48% winrate in games and 47% in matches. After Coach Park's arrival, Bbyong improved rapidly and his improvement is visible in his recent results. In the qualifiers for IEM Sao Paulo, Bbyong took out herO[join], Dark, eMotion, Hydra, Squirtle, and sKyHigh, while also 2-0'ing Taeja and 2-1'ing Ryung in Red Bull Battlegrounds NYC qualifiers. He, like herO[join], has been on a tear recently and coming in to Proleague where Protosses reign supreme, it should suit him quite well.
This is pretty long already, so the rest of the best will be put in spoilers - thanks for reading :D
+ Show Spoiler [Trust] +
Trust was one of the three rookies to make a splash in the CJ roster near the end of last Proleague season. Trust won a handful of series in Code A, and then his sprint to prominence ran out of juice. He notably beat Lucky, Genius, and Dream in Code A, but failed absurdly quickly after his handful of Code A wins. He was played a handful of times in Proleague, and while he had hard opponents for most games, his rapid decline after his few strong wins left him fading into obscurity. He held a 40% game winrate and a 33% match winrate before Coach Park's arrival, but when Coach Park did come, he improved in a big way. He jumped to a 63% winrate in games and 65% in matches, with wins over Curious, Lucky, Check, Reality, Effort, Billowy, Sora, herO[join], and Symbol in recent times. He, too, has been on a rapid improvement since the arrival of Coach Park, and while CJ's Protoss line is well-set with the bo5 format, it is always good to have a backup and potential sniper that has a record of strong performance, to allow some variance in the lineup.
+ Show Spoiler [Bunny] +
Bunny, alongside Bbyong, makes up CJ's proleague Terran lineup (as much as i'd love it to happen, sKyHigh probably won't make an appearance). Bunny had an impressive few games in Proleague, especially compared to Trust, as he went 4-1 with wins over Reality and Rogue as his two most notable victories. He also took out DRG and Leenock in Code A, but otherwise didn't perform - he had a handful of wins against now-retired players like Last, Best, and Iris, and hadn't really managed to get any wins over big names. His position post-Park hasn't changed much - his win rates have balanced out at 51% games and 50% matches, and while he has gotten some wins against notable names like Flash, Tassadar, Squirtle, and soO, he isn't showing a rapid upswing in skill that other CJ players have shown. It doesn't bode well for his prospects in Proleague, unless he can find somewhere to improve rapidly.
+ Show Spoiler [Hush] +
Hush, better known as Bong, comes in with a story quite similar to Trust. He made a convincing early debut in Proleague, with wins over Flash, Rogue, Jaedong, soO, and Dear before running into a wall in April. His previous strong performances began to fall apart as his only two wins came against Stork and Roro. He ended the pre-Park period with a 39% game winrate and 36% match winrate. Much like Trust, after Coach Park's arrival, Hush improved quite drastically. While not turning into the same level of Protoss as herO[join], he has become a reliable, solid, if not flashy player. Hush now holds a 54% winrate in games and 60% in matches, though several of his recent wins come from foreigners so it is difficult to tell how much he has really improved so far.
+ Show Spoiler [rare] +
Unfortunately, I must make the proclamation that Rare is just not that good. He is consistently at a 40-44% winrate overall and hasn't really showed any signs of improvement under Coach Park's tutelage. I hate to condemn him to retirement or cleaning dishes, but with Hydra, Effort, and Songduri in line before him, it's hard to believe that someone with no real sign of betterment will show up in the lineup any time soon. Fortunately, he is a rarity (pardon the pun) and an exception to the rule rather than the norm.
+ Show Spoiler [Songduri] +
Songduri, while definitely the third-string Zerg on CJ, is by no means a bad player. He was running a 47% game winrate and 43% match winrate, notably taking wins off of Pigbaby, Sora, and eMotion but not a lot of performance otherwise. Fortunately, after Coach Park's arrival, he joined the ranks of improvers and even made a brief appearance in Code S (not a successful outing, but he did take a game off of Rain). So far he finds himself holding a 56% winrate in games and 60% winrate in matches, making him close with Effort statistically, though his wins are not against competition that is quite as difficult as Effort's foes. He does appear to be more well-rounded, and could earn himself a spot in the lineup based on having a solid base in all three match ups, while Effort has always struggled slightly with his ZvP.
+ Show Spoiler [sKyHigh] +
sKyHigh, too, must be doomed to the back of the CJ bus, as much as it hurts my heart. His pre-Park winrates are actually higher than his post-Park win rates, though this is mostly padded by the MLG MvP Invitational - wins over players like Idra Sheth, and qxc padded his winrate to 53% in games and 51% in matches, while his mostly Korean matches after Park's arrival come out as 47% in games and 38% in matches. The one big hope is that he managed to go 1-2 with Ryung, Avenge, and Bbyong in recent games, so it's possible that he's not as bad as the percentages suggest, but so far he hasn't shown anything to make him shine brighter than Bunny as the backup Terran for CJ Entus, especially since Bunny is a relative newcomer to the scene and likely has a lot of room to improve.
