Image credit: VALORANT Esports (Photo by David Lee/Riot Games)
Gen.G Esports are one best-of-three series away from making it to its second consecutive international VCT grand finals.
VCT Americas versus Pacific has slowly become an age-old classic after Gen.G Esports took down 100 Thieves in two straight games to book a spot in the upper bracket final of VCT Masters Shanghai. This means that Gen.G is just one more series win away from making it to its second consecutive international grand finals and its fourth overall for the year.
Of course, this doesn't spell the end for 100T as they will now drop to the lower bracket for a slightly longer run to the grand finals. However, they will have to go up against another VCT Pacific team in Paper Rex, who also happens to be the region's number one seed. 100T will have two more best-of-threes to win before they can make their way to the lower bracket final, which is a best-of-five.
100T also had the first map pick where they picked Icebox, a map where they were 1-0 in the tournament while Gen.G was 0-1. Gen.G was known to drop the first map in all three games, but that wasn't the case this time. They got off to a near-perfect start in the first half with a 9-3 lead started with a Jong-Min “Lakia” Kim 3K in the first pistol round.
Gen.G also had a great start in the second half with a 4K from Kim “Karon” Won-tae in the second pistol round, which was bested by an ace from Sang-beom “Munchkin” Byeon in the following round right after. With an 11-3, Gen.G needed just two more rounds to win the first map but 100T had other ideas. They would go on to win the next seven rounds in a row that also saw the team's IGL Kelden “Boostio” Pupello get a 4K during that run.
With the score 11-10 in favour of Gen.G, they would go on to win the last two rounds in a row to break any hope or belief from 100T. Game two would take place on Gen.G's map pick of Ascent and the first half would be a tight fight between both teams. Gen.G took a 5-1 halfway through the first half but 100T managed to mount a comeback once more, taking five in a row and left Gen.G with the last round of the half to make it 6-6 at the break.
Both teams ended up trading the first three rounds of the second half with 100T getting two as opposed to Gen.G's one. Despite the one-point deficit, Gen.G went on a tear to win five rounds in a row to put themselves on map point once more. With the odds stacked against them, 100T managed to take the next two rounds to keep make it a close fight but Gen.G had other ideas as they would prevent any sort of comeback to force overtime.
As Gen.G are now in the upper bracket final, their opponent will be determined once the winner is decided between the Team Heretics and G2 Esports match-up. For the loser in the second upper bracket semifinal series, they will drop to face FUT Esports.
