How TenZ and Sentinels dominated to win first NA VALORANT Masters

The first stage of the VALORANT Champions Tour came to an end this weekend with teams being crowned champions around the world. If you didn’t tune in to watch the action happen live, we broke down Sentinels’ victorious run, named the most outstanding player of the tournament and put together a roundup of the lower bracket matches.

Sentinels crowned Masters champions

The NA Masters grand final was a battle between the undefeated vs. the almost-undefeated: Tyson “TenZ” Ngo vs Andrej “babybay” Francisty. Sentinels started off a bit cold on Ascent and FaZe capitalized on their hesitation with their trademark aggression. The first half went in FaZe’s favor, with an 8-4 score, Sentinels managed to claw their way back in the second half, eventually winning the map 13-11 despite babybay topping the leaderboards with 27 kills.

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Sentinels came out of the gate swinging on Bind, with Michael “dapr” Gulino leading the charge for them. Sentinels flipped the score from Ascent in their favor, winning the first half of Bind 8-4. The second half was not any more forgiving for FaZe, as dapr ended it with an applause-worthy 4k and showed FaZe who was in control.

Haven was FaZe’s chance to turn it around, but right from the start, it was not looking good for them. Sentinels split them up every chance they got and shut them down one by one. A 10-2 half from Sentinels spelled certain victory, and when Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen was left in a 1v4 with 2 HP, it was all over.

Sentinels took home the VCT NA Masters crown and defeated FaZe 3-0 in the grand finals, proving that they are the best team in North America … at least for now.

Most outstanding player(s) at NA Masters

It might be unfair to name a single player as the most outstanding, so it’s going to be a tie between TenZ and babybay. Let’s go over some of the stats that make these two players the best in VCT NA Masters, courtesy of RunItBack.gg’s Stats Bot.

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Across the entire Masters event, TenZ and babybay are at the top in terms of ACS (average combat score), K/D, and average kills per round. Looking at ACS, babybay is first with a 267 ACS across 11 matches, with TenZ close behind him with a 262 ACS in 10 matches.

TenZ is in first with a 1.45 K/D. Hunter “SicK” Mims is second with a K/D of 1.44, and then babybay comes in third with 1.41. As for average kills, both players are tied with an average of 0.95 kills per round. Talk about consistency!

Of course, these are just pure statistics. Who do you think was the MVP here? Drop a reply on Twitter and let us know!

Lower bracket roundup

Team Envy and Gen.G Esports kicked off the lower bracket matches on Friday with 2-0 wins against Luminosity and 100 Thieves, respectively. Envy and Gen.G faced each other in the next lower bracket matchup. That match was closer than might have been expected given the teams’ seeding, with Envy taking one map over Gen.G. One win was all they would see though, and Gen.G closed that game out 2-1 and moved on to face FaZe.

Read more: 100 Thieves’ Hiko calls TenZ ‘amazing player’ and ‘valuable asset’

FaZe proved to be the end of Gen.G’s Masters run and they kept the train going into the grand final against Sentinels, the undefeated masters of the upper bracket.

Nerd Street Gamers will be hosting Stage 2 of the VALORANT Champions Tour starting April 1, and registration is now open. Be sure to stay tuned for our coverage of that event and more here at Nerd Street!

Lead image credit: Sentinels / Twitter