The first round of the lower bracket in the North America Stage 1: Challengers played out today. All four of the competing teams needed four straight wins in the lower bracket to secure their spot at Masters:Reykjavik. Two teams moved one step closer to their goal, but unfortunately, the other two teams saw their dreams of competing at the first international LAN of the year come to an end.

XSET vs. Knights (2-0 XSET)

Knights Knights Inactive and XSET XSET Inactive came into this match after suffering close losses to Cloud9 and OpTic respectively in the first round.

Knights matched up poorly in the map selection process. Their permaban of Fracture was also XSET's least played map. XSET banned their own second worst map, Ascent, which made up 48% of Knights' wins this year. XSET got their three best maps of Split, Breeze, and Bind through the veto.

Matthew "Cryocells" Panganiban picked up right where he left off against OpTic with a triple kill in XSET's attacking pistol. Knights clawed back into the half with five rounds to take the lead, but a Cryocells ace helped spearhead a streak of XSET rounds that gave them the 7-5 advantage at the half. Knights won their own attacking pistol but ran into a stifling XSET defense that only gave up a single gun round.

Damion "XXiF" Cook played Neon for the first time in a competitive match. His in-game leader Ashton "Frosty" Rakoske explained their reasoning behind the agent selection.

“We thought it could deny a lot of control in A main and mid and that it could catch them off guard since no one's seen our Split.”

There were a number of interesting and aggressive plays with Neon on Knights' defense, but in the end it wasn't enough to overcome XSET in this map.

Cryocells landed eight triple kills throughout the series.

Knights got out to a faster start on Breeze with three in a row on the attack before XSET found their footing. XSET began to take more aggressive positions on the map which prevented Knights from setting up clean site executions. XSET closed the half up 7-5 and ran away with their own attack for a 13-7 victory. Knights attempted a couple of aggressive pushes but XSET were able to locate the aggression and overrun anchor players on the spike sites. Cryocells finished with 33 kills as he won aim duels consistently in almost every round.

Rory "dephh" Jackson and Frosty playing their own game with the Cypher cameras.

Knights struggled to win aim duels once XSET had the economy to buy rifles. Additionally, Cryocells had a monstrous 58 kills to only 22 deaths to top the scoreboard for XSET in the series.

XSET will now face Luminosity in the second round of the lower bracket. Knights became the first team eliminated from playoffs. They will have to wait until Stage 2 to have another chance to qualify for the international stage. In a postmatch interview, ban said they are confident that they'll be back to compete in the near future.

“[With] the improvements we made within the last three months I feel like we're going to be just getting better and better,” said ban. “Maybe twice as better than we are right now.”

Version1 vs. Sentinels (2-1 V1)

Although both teams represented North America in the first ever international Valorant event, Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #2 TenZ Tyson Ngo Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid Sacy Gustavo Rossi and Version1 Version1 Inactive have walked very different paths in the time since then. Sentinels attended every international event of 2021, but started to decline coming into 2022. Furthermore, Version1 struggled to compete back home, but found new life when they picked up Alexander "zander" Dituri as their IGL.

Version1 secured the first seed of group B beating Sentinels 2-0 in the process. The first two maps selected in this match, Haven and Ascent, were also the two maps that Version1 won in that group stage match. Both teams disappointed in the first round of the playoffs, but that set up a heavyweight elimination match here in the lower bracket.

Version1 opened up their attack on Haven with a lightning fast hit onto C. Sentinels responded by making more coordinated plays than they have in the past and quickly took the lead. Tyson "TenZ" Ngo was constantly being supported by flashes from Hunter "SicK" Mims's KAY/O utility which made him incredibly effective at opening duels. Site retakes showed off Sentinels' new coordination the most as they were successful at defusing the spike in five out of the nine rounds it was planted. TenZ in particular stepped up his game and converted a 1v1 clutch against zander in the final round of the first half for a score of 8-4.

TenZ finally recaptured his 2021 form.

Sentinels won the first three rounds of the second half for an 11-4 advantage and eventually closed the map 13-7. TenZ had struggled throughout the entire tournament, but this was his best game by far with 31 kills to only nine deaths.

The second map was Ascent which Sentinels lost both times they played it in the group stage, including a 13-4 loss to Version1. Version1 got off to a fast start on their attack with five rounds in a row. Sentinels could not hold back the fast pace of Version1 until they started to contest the extremities of the map. A player would push one of the edges on the map to either take fights or call the rotate to the opposite side. A round 6 eco helped Sentinels build momentum of their own which led to them recovering six rounds in the half.

This aggressive postplant from Version1 caught Sentinels off guard.

Version1 won the second pistol and completely walled Sentinels' attempts to break into either site. Even with KAY/O knives suppressing the utility of the site anchors, Sentinels were unable to cleanly plant the spike. Eco round wins in rounds 16 and 18 gave Sentinels a chance, but a 1v2 clutch by Loic "effys" Sauvageau sealed a 13-9 Version1 win. Maxim "wippie" Shepelev led the way for Version1 with 320 ACS to go along with a round 3 ace.

The deciding map of the series was Fracture. Version1 were undefeated on Fracture this year until they suffered a heartbreaking map three overtime loss to Luminosity which dropped them to the lower bracket. Sentinels had struggled on the map during the group stage, but brought a completely new composition with TenZ on Raze and SicK on Breach. Sentinels lost the pistol, but TenZ pulled off a miraculous ace with his Sheriff to give them the momentum in the second round.

A highlight worthy play from TenZ.

Version1 found themselves in a 6-3 hole, but changed up their strategy and pushed B main in the final three rounds. Erik "penny" Penny won the head to head matchup against Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan multiple times in B main, and as a result Version1 won the final three rounds of the half.

To start the second half, Sentinels took the B site without taking any damage, but they were unable to stop the defuse in a Brimstone smoke due to a Sage wall that created awkward angles. They decided to force buy into the next round which put them on the back foot once they lost it. Version1 nearly lost all their momentum when penny died to his teammate zander's Brimstone incendiary grenade in a critical 2v2 scenario. In the very next round, ShahZam pulled off a chaotic 1v2 clutch to bring Sentinels within one round of tying the game, but Version1 pulled away to win the map 13-8.

Jordan "Zellsis" Montemurro described how Version1 adapted to the new meta by picking up the Sage to replace the Astra utility that was previously used to slow down the attackers.

“I think Sage comes into play more with Astra gone now because she has a heal, she has a rez, slows, wall, so I just think she's going to be the Astra replacement.”

Both teams attempted aggressive pushes on defense, but Version1 more often found kills off the back of it. penny woke up after a slow start to the series with 213 ADR on the Chamber and a 7-2 head to head record against ShahZam's Chamber.

Sentinels are eliminated from contention at a VCT international event for the first time ever. They showed some promise in this match, but they will have to improve further if they want to challenge for the Masters 2 title.

Sentinels have ideas about what they need to do in order to make it back to the big stage. “We're definitely going to try to change things up going forward,” SicK explained. ”We're going to work on our setups and try to be a bit more structured.”

Version1 will face Cloud9 in the lower bracket round 2 in a battle of first seeds.

Looking Ahead

The lower bracket round 2 plays out on March 24 with two games.

Luminosity vs. XSET will be a rematch from group A while Cloud9 vs. Version1 will eliminate a number 1 seed.

korexicano contributed to this story with interviews and co-writing/editing.