Confirmed to be moving on to VCT Masters will be the top seven teams of Challengers: 100Thieves, XSET, GhostEsports, Evil Geniuses, OpTic, Luminosity and FaZe Clan. Of these teams, OpTic competed in the previous Masters tournament in Reykjavik and wound up placing first. The second stage of Challengers has been a victory lap for them. The eighth and final team will be decided this Saturday between The Guard and NRG. The Guard has a point to make this time around, since they qualified for Masters Stage One but were knocked out in their first match against Paper Rex, a Singapore-based team. Currently, both The Guard and NRG are tied in their rankings with one win and three losses each.
[Related: Sentinels SicK to Take Extended Leave This Season]
Star Valorant team Sentinels was dubbed by esports.gg as “the best NA has to offer” in 2021. This fame seemed well-earned after their debut in winning first place in all three Challengers playoffs, but in this season, the Sentinels have yet to display the same level of performance that they did previously. In Challengers One this year, Sentinels failed to place high enough to reach Masters One. In fact, they failed to win a single game.
Shazeb “ShahZaM” Khan, an original Sentinels player, commented on Twitter, “Ah if only people knew half of what we’ve had to work through… I’m sorry, it’s been a rough stage for us as team.” The team certainly have been through more drama than most this season. Almost every single player has been tested: the loss of Jay “sinatraa” Won to a league investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, Jared “zombs” Gitlin’s refusal to play in favor of twitch streaming, Tyson “TenZ” Ngo’s short bout of Coronavirus and Hunter “SicK” Mims sudden suspension following family problems.
Similar misfortune has fallen on Cloud9 Gaming. Although they haven’t had quite the same levels of personal drama, they have only managed to score a single win. That puts them at the very back of their group, and only barely ahead of the Sentinels. Cloud9 is far from being qualified for VCT Masters Stage Two. They are yet another former finals level team that failed to recapture their old glory this season. Last year, Cloud9 managed to win the Last-Chance Qualifier and make it all the way to Champions. There, they were beaten by Team Liquid, a team from the Netherlands.
As for the eliminated teams, there is one last path to Champions: the Last Chance Qualifiers. LCQ is a high-stakes competition slated for August. It pits the losing teams against each other for their last chance to move on. The last chance qualifiers are invitational, and no lineup has been announced. It is possible that Sentinels will opt out and try to fix their internal issues before next season. Otherwise, it will be exciting to see Sentinels and Cloud9 face off for a chance at the championships.
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