The road to Berlin takes a detour for the new-look TSM VALORANT team, who find themselves out of contention at the NA VCT Stage Three: Challengers One event. TSM were eliminated in the open qualifiers at the hands of the new Noble roster, who defeated them 2-1, punctuated with a 13-2 rout on Ascent.
The match wasn’t streamed anywhere, so fans had to tune into sites like VLR to get live score updates, or watch streams where people were checking scores via the VALORANT friends list. Noble got things things going by stealing away TSM’s opening pick of Haven, taking a back-and-forth first map, 13-10. TSM came firing back, however, with an utter display of dominance on Bind, jumping out to an 11-0 lead on defense before Noble took their lone attack round of the first half. TSM took the next two rounds to clinch Bind, 13-2.
Despite taking Noble’s map pick so decisively and seemingly taking back the momentum, TSM ran into a buzzsaw on Ascent. This time, it was Noble dominating on defense on the first half, as they prevented any TSM player from generating any offense. Noble’s lead ballooned to 10-0 before TSM took the final two rounds of the half, but Noble quickly completed the upset 13-2.
For TSM, it’s a bitter end to their first run with the new lineup. After VCT Stage Two, they benched Cutler and added Bang to the lineup. They also brought in coach Chet, and came in with high expectations; many expected and hoped to see them face 100 Thieves in the next round.
100T instead will face Noble, a team fielding an entirely new roster that was signed less than a week before the qualifiers. Noble has fielded two different NA VALORANT rosters over the past year, but neither of them were able to pull off a win quite like this.
The Friday of matches in the NA VCT open qualifiers saw a number of top-tier teams flirt with potential upsets. T1, 100 Thieves, and Gen.G all had to fight back from 1-0 deficits to win their series. But TSM wasn’t the only upset today; FaZe were upset by Dark Zero, and both NRG and Immortals were taken down by VIRTUOSO and Kansas City Pioneers, respectively. The final round of the open qualifier begins tomorrow, July 7, where eight teams will lock in a spot in the Challengers One main event.
