Sentinels win VCT 2024: Americas Kickoff in 3-2 epic over LOUD
Sentinels crowned itself champion of the VALORANT Champions Tour 2024: Americas Kickoff last night after a back-and-forth brawl with LOUD that took all five maps to complete. As a result, Sentinels will be representing the Americas region at VCT 2024: Masters Madrid as the 1st seed, with LOUD settling for the 2nd seed as the Kickoff runner-up.
SEN -- just like their semifinals match the day prior against NRG -- was considered the underdog against LOUD, but jumped out ahead of the Brazilian side with a 13-9 win on Sunset and a 13-3 slaughter on Split. LOUD, no stranger to reverse sweeps, settled in on Icebox and looked to have the map locked down after establishing a 9-4 lead. SEN ended up storming back to tie up Icebox 11-11, but it was ultimately LLL who edged out the victory 13-11. LOUD ended up closing the door with far less stress on Bind for map 4 by a score of 13-8 and the series went to Lotus for the final map.
The series had raged back and forth for the first four maps, but the final map was anything but a dramatic finish. SEN left no shadow of a doubt who the superior team on the server on Lotus and cruised to a 13-4 victory to take the series 3-2. Tyson "TenZ" Ngo was named Finals MVP for his performance, which was punctuated by a 245 ACS.
Last night's victory marked the end of a long drought for Sentinels -- the last time SEN won an S-tier VALORANT esports event was VCT: Stage 2 Masters - Reykjavík on May 30, 2021. Masters Madrid will be SEN's first international S-tier event in over 800 days. SEN and LOUD will join EDward Gaming, FunPlus Phoenix, Karmine Corp, Team Heretics, Paper Rex, and Gen.G at Masters Madrid on March 14 with three Championship Points up for grabs.
