Built By Gamers knocked the Masters 1 champions and top ranked squad Sentinels out of Challengers 1 qualification today, April 3. The Stage 1 champions are two weeks off of their championship run over FaZe Clan. BBG swept Sentinels 2-0 on both Ascent and Haven 13-5.
The BBG squad took down the kings of North America with two new players. The organization added free agents Jake “POACH” Brumleve and Raymond “Rarkar” Xu this month.
HOW!? @Poach is straight up cracked.#VCTChallengersNA pic.twitter.com/CmBfwGJdmC
— VALORANT Champions Tour NA (@valesports_na) April 3, 2021
POACH, the former Andbox in-game leader, had a great series. He had multiple clutches and seem to know how to counter Sentinels at every turn. The Canadian Sova player Tristan “Critical” Trinacty also had a standout series statistically. The former Mamba Mode gaming player topped his teams leaderboard in terms of average combat score on both maps. On Ascent, he finished with 14 kills and 229 ACS and 21 kills and a 348 ACS score on Haven.
Sentinels will have to run through another qualifier for a chance at international competition at Challengers 2 starting April 15.
Before Built By Gamers upset Sentinels
BBG was a perennial tier 2 team before their upset against Sentinels today. The organization’s biggest achievement before this result was two finals appearances in a Nerd Street Gamers monthly tournament and Complexity x NSG Invitational in 2020. In the Valorant Champions Tour Stage 1, the team failed to qualify for all three Challengers events.
At each qualifier, the team lost in the round of 16, just one win away from qualification. In the first two, Sentinels and FaZe Clan sent the BBG squad home. At Challengers 3, BBG were bested by the amateur squad DaHoonkaBhanKoloos, now Kooky Koalas.
In Stage 1, the BBG starting lineup was the same. Critical, Joseph “Bjor” Bjorklund, William “Will” Cheng, Rob “rob-wiz” Kennedy and Mike “pho” Panza all competed under the BBG banner. After failing to qualify, the team went through changes in the past month. On March 25 pho announced that he was allowed to look for other offers and rob-wiz expressed interest in moving to coaching a few days later.
I've been thinking about how fun it would be to coach a team, I really like the idea of sharing my knowledge and experience with a group and helping them grow together, building a good solid foundation built on trust/communication, definitely an avenue I want to pursue eventually
— rob-wiz (@robw1z) March 29, 2021
The team will compete with its new lineup in Stage 2 Challengers 1 on April 8 at the main event.
