Gen.G has swept XSET 2-0 in the lower bracket of the North American Masters tournament. Both teams were knocked into the the loser’s bracket after facing two fan favorites, FaZe and Envy. The two teams had only played each other twice, once in a B-tier event and the other in a First Strike qualifier. XSET couldn’t keep up.
Gen.G took the series thanks to a monstrous performance by Shawn “Shawn” O’Riley on Reyna. He put up 23 kills and had an average combat score of 309 on the first map. On the second map, Gen.G as a whole shined with recent Counter Strike: Global Offensive convert Kenneth “koosta” Suen with the top performance on Cypher.
XSET’s fast rise
Before the Valorant Champions Tour, XSET’s roster was a relatively unknown. The lineup, who went by the name Pretty Boyz before being signed by XSET, was recognized across B-tier events as a tough opponent, but not on the level of established teams like TSM or Gen.G. The team gained notoriety after knocking out their established peers at the first VCT Challengers qualifier.
The Zander “thwifo” Kim led team used its tactile style to take games over top North American teams like Envy, NRG and FaZe. One knock against the team was that it kept qualifying in the lower bracket, losing the first match in each major tournament. XSET, a squad that’s pulled off a fair number of tournament rebounds, was in the process of making a comeback against Gen.G in this matchup. It was one round away from forcing overtime on the second map in the lower bracket series.
The future for Gen.G
Gen.G will face off against either Sentinels or 100 Thieves in the next round of the bracket. The team looked impressive in its loss to Envy in the first round and only needed two maps to deal with the young upstarts on XSET. Shawn and koosta specifically have improved since competing in Challengers Three. The team has shown new compositions and agent picks across maps and may be tough for teams to deal with as the tournament moves along.
