It felt really good to see a big upset.
Sentinels not only dropped their first round at an international event, they dropped their first international series this week. A team that once felt untouchable confirmed that they do indeed bleed.
And we got it earlier than expected.
Sentinels are not eliminated from Masters Berlin. But being brought to their knees by a team — albeit a good team backed by one of the top European organizations — not considered to be the best from the EMEA region in the group stages is huge news. And they just dropped a map to F4Q.
The story of Sentinels is slowing changing in front of our eyes.
Tyson “TenZ” Ngo likely will want to forget the series. Going negative for the first time since July 10th against Envy on Breeze, G2’s removal of TenZ from the series was huge. With a 20% first death percentage — compared to his 11% first death percentage in Stage 3 Challengers Playoffs, TenZ wasn’t able to find his rhythm or comfort. Oscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho managing to get first kill onto TenZ three times on Split — the most in any one-to-one match-up — shouldn’t be pushed aside. TenZ lead both teams in most individual deaths for the series despite.
And the crazy part is that he was still topping Sentinels in average damage per round. That’s how bad Sentinels were playing.
It wasn’t all on TenZ with Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan calling an uncharacteristically poor series and Jared “zombs” Gitlin putting up a -18 for the series (including a 1-15 on Icebox). It is just surprising to see arguably the best player in the world play this bad.
G2 just outplayed Sentinels. Everyone on G2 stepped up to the plate. They would only drop two rounds in a situation where G2 was a full-buy and Sentinels would enter the round with a semi-buy. Raw skill that Sentinels were able to rely on simply was met by better gun play.
The tape is out on how to beat Sentinels. Teams now have three games, two maps to look at where Sentinels legitimately were outclassed.
In a relatively short period of time, the conversation went from “can Sentinels be beaten” to “can Sentinels even win the tournament?”
Its a somewhat strange experience. Rarely do we see an upset of his magnitude happen in a tournament and there are still games to be played. In March Madness, when the number one seed loses a game, its over. But in esports, with group stages, you can continue to fight on. It instead feels like a fighter get hurt badly but the round ends and they have the ability to recover for another round.
Sentinels will face their North American counterparts Envy in the opening round of the knockout stages. Despite being +212 underdogs to win the series, Envy has continued to impress with their latest line-up. Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker has lived up to expectations. Members of Team Envy connected to allegations of match fixing haven’t been bothered by the updates, continuing to chug along.
And more importantly, they have something Sentinels don’t have: a coach.
Credit where credit is due: G2 put together an excellent game plan against Sentinels. Without a proper staff, Sentinels will be left to converse about how to prepare going forward. While they have an excellent mind in their captain ShahZaM, it is tough to ignore the consequences of a non-player adding to the conversation with a different perspective.
Their 2-1 series victory over F4Q was a nice rebound – -with dominant showings on Breeze and Haven. Yet it is somewhat crazy that them dropping a map here is somewhat meaningless.
Because of the age of the scene, and the game it was an understandable decision to go without a coach. An emotional leader might have provided a different dynamic to the team but a “good strategic coach” hasn’t necessarily produced dividends for the team. One of the most respected strategic minds — Team Liquid’s Connor “Sliggy” Blomfield — isn’t even at the event as his team was unable to qualify.
Sentinels need something different, something fresh to the team. As the game continues to evolve, relying on raw skill can only get you so far. They may be the best team the game has every seen. But if they keep this up, their peak of the team may just be shortened.
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