Looking at the tournament bracket for any kind of VALORANT tournament is a difficult task for anyone trying to predict outcomes. However, for the soon to start North American VCT Last Chance Qualifier aka NA LCQ, it feels almost like an impossible quest to complete, as every team has the capabilities to go on and win the qualifier.
We have come to an end in this VALORANT NA LCQ team spotlight, with some incredible teams left to talk about which can definitely have a chance to win it all.
100 Thieves
100 Thieves went back to the drawing board about two weeks after its new roster of 2022 debuted in Stage One, following a shocking 13-0 loss finish on Ascent to The Guard during their 0-2 start in the competition. With their substitutes, they ended up missing the playoffs entirely back in Stage One.
The lack of confidence and teamplay shown by 100 Thieves in Stage One seems to be gone. The organization focused on bringing in new leadership in GM ddk and coach Sean Gares (CS GO veteran), while rebuilding around flex superstar Asuna with a young, and hungry to improve group of players. Similar to The Guard, a Champions trip for this young core would be ahead of its time, but the 100 Thieves’ players have recently shown they can definitely play against the best.
Evil Geniuses
Similar to other names we have showcased in this series of articles, EG had a complicated Stage One performance and according to some had the worst performance out of anyone, 0-5 in groups and only two total singular maps won. This disastrous result led to the team swapping out Pho and YaBoiDre for C0M and Apotheon in recent months.
Nevertheless, EG saw a rebirth in Stage Two thanks to their new additions to the roster. C0M was one if not the most impactful initiator in Stage Two, while continuously setting up duelist jawgemo for a breakout performance in the main event. Similar to 100 Thieves, it’s not an all in situation for these young core of players, but they have shown a lot of improvement between Stage One and Stage Two.
Sentinels
After an incredibly unexpected early exit in the playoffs of Stage One, Sentinels plummeted in Stage Two. The team lost SicK for a long time, lost TenZ one week due to COVID, newest addition Kanpeki really didn’t hit the mark to make some sort of impact to the team, and the substitutes in Dani and Rawkus simply were not able to fill the gigantic shoes left behind.
This team is by far the biggest wildcard out of them all thanks to one name in the roster, shroud, one of the biggest streamers in the world and most likely one of the best FPS players with competitive experience we have ever seen, however he has never competed in professional VALORANT to any degree before. Sentinels did pretty well in picking up a good flex option in Zellsis. We know what the trio of dapr, TenZ, and ShahZaM can do when they’re working together, and if shroud lives up to the massive expectations, maybe the roster can resurrect the Sentinels name back from the ground.
The NA LCQ is set to start on Thursday August 4th, with the opening match between The Guard and Sentinels at 3pm CT, followed by FaZe vs Evil Geniuses. Make sure to stay tuned in as we’ll be covering the event and sharing our esports picks as it goes on!
