![]() ![]() “In the very last round, we were in a 5v2, and we’re just saying, ‘hey, it’s fine, settle down,’” Hiko said. Few teams have even one player with that type of experience, much less four. Spencer “Hiko” Martin and Steel have over two decades of combined experience, nitr0 won the Intel Grand Slam with Team Liquid back in 2019, Ethan “Ethan” Arnold was playing in major events into 2021 before being picked up by 100T. Four out of five of the 100 Thieves players have played on huge stages in their CS career. For 100 Thieves, nitr0 flexed his experience playing on a huge stage with one of his best performances of his VALORANT career. That was part of our game plan for sure.”ĬNed was the only player on Acend to finish with a positive K/D with an impressive +23 over the three maps. If we have one controller he can probably get some pretty easy picks on us. He’s their flex player so he moves around a lot and we were just kind of avoiding him. “He seemed like he wasn’t getting too nervous, which is surprising, as he’s a young player, an up-and-coming star, so props to him on that. ![]() “They play a lot around their star players, cNed’s very talented,” nitr0 said. ![]() ![]() The star Turkish duelist and OPer was the driving force behind the early lead for Acend as he seemed to close off large sections of Breeze with his dominant aim over the map’s long sightlines. In addition to counting on Acend to slow down their play, 100 Thieves also placed a clear focus on isolating and avoiding Mehmet “cNed” Yagiz Ipek. When we take that into account in our strat book, we are just so much better.” So we knew they weren’t going to try to make an insane Jett dash play. They weren’t playing like they were up, they were playing not to lose. “So we take that into account when we are creating our strats. “Whenever the pressure is on them, it feels like they don’t want to make individual plays,” said Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella at the postgame press conference. As one of VALORANT’s most experienced rosters in major events during their time playing Counter-Strike, 100 Thieves seem able to handle the high-stress situations better than less-experienced teams. It could be that as other teams get closer to finishing out the match, they get more nervous. One other simple explanation is experience. Whether it's simply adrenaline or something unspoken between the teammates, whatever it is, is working so far. We will definitely try to figure that out, but until then, we have to ride with it.” That could be something that we can’t stimulate until it happens organically. We do a number of things before the game to get physically and mentally warmed up, but there’s something that just doesn’t specifically click until a certain moment. “We don’t know what it is specifically, it's hard to diagnose. “Obviously we don’t go out and have slow starts on purpose,” Steel laughed. But it worked for 100T once again on this map as they moved to 3-0 on the tournament with wins over two of the top EMEA teams in Gambit and now Acend. Is that the safest strategy in the world? Probably not. “If you went in and changed the scoreboard so it said we were losing 8-4 when it was 0-0, we’d be insane, we’d 13-0 everyone.” “We take the game more seriously when we are down and we stop trolling as much,” said 100 Thieves’ Josh “steel” Nissan after the win. Once there, it was all over for Acend, they went down quickly in two OT rounds as 100 Thieves moved on to the semifinals of VALORANT’s most important tournament yet. It didn’t matter, 100 Thieves had the momentum pushed as hard as possible to force OT. Peter “Asuna” Mazuryk popped off in the 20th round, which carried momentum into a pair of eco rounds for Acend. With their backs to the ocean, 100 Thieves began winning. A quarterfinal exit would leave their path to Champions reliant solely on the success of their bitter NA rivals as Envy would be guaranteed a spot in Champions based on circuit points. 100 Thieves could not afford to lose another round. Acend started strong and continued to push its advantage all the way to a 12-7 lead in the second half. With the first two maps split, the VALORANT Masters: Berlin quarterfinal matchup between Acend and 100 Thieves came down to Breeze. ![]()
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