The NA VCT Stage Three: Challengers Playoffs are in full swing as each team fights for a spot in the upper finals. Sentinels and Rise faced off in one of the first matches of the tournament, resulting in a 2-1 win for Sentinels and a one-way ticket to the lower bracket for Rise.
Rise’s Phat ‘supamen” Le spoke with Dot Esports after his team’s loss against Sentinels about their performance, plans going into the loser’s bracket, and how it’s okay for fans to consider Rise a dark horse.
Rise managed to win the second map of the series, which is impressive against the seemingly unstoppable Sentinels juggernaut. However, the other two maps of the series were one-sided affairs.
“Sentinels had the better spacing,” supamen told Dot Esports. “We’ve never played a game with that good of spacing before. They just exploited that and smacked us.”
Sentinels started the series with a devastating 13-3 win on Breeze, with Rise only winning one round in the first half. However, this was Sentinels’ map pick, and the team was comfortable on the tropical battlefield. Rise, on the other hand, did not have much experience with its new roster on Breeze.
“After our last closed qualifier, we started playing Breeze to see if we could do better on that than Icebox and see how things go. After a couple of scrims, we were like, okay, yea, we can play around with this map. We got some good results in scrims and stuff like that, but obviously, we played the best of the best. They found a flaw in our setup, so that’s what happened.”
Supamen joined Rise in early July, just in time for Stage Three. Supamen previously played with Shanks and POISED on Dignitas, meaning he did not have to adjust to a completely new team. But the new roster did have less experience on certain maps, which was clear on Breeze. Ascent was a different story, as Rise managed to beat Sentinels in map two of the series, but this momentum did not carry into the final game on Bind.
Rise’s loss against Sentinels was expected by many, considering Sentinels is currently the best team in the world. Rise is also considered the dark horse in the Challengers Playoffs, which does not bother supamen, since he is confident in his team.
“It’s fine to consider us the dark horse because we don’t have as much experience as some of the other teams in the tournament. I think it’s totally fine for people to think that way. We believe that we have the skill and the experience to compete with the top three teams in the game, and we’ll be on top soon,” supamen said.
Rise still has a chance to fight their way out of the lower bracket, and supamen is not worried about any team in particular. He admitted that his team played scared in their final game against Sentinels, but that will not happen again. He also confirmed that he would like a rematch against XSET, as his former Crossfire teammate AYRIN previously beat him and he is ready for revenge.
Rise will face TSM in the Challengers Playoffs lower bracket tomorrow at 4:00 pm CT. The winner will move to round two in the lower bracket, while the loser will watch the remainder of the tournament and Masters 3 Berlin from home.
