Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #4 N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid comfortably defeated 100 Thieves 100 Thieves North America Rank #5 zander Alexander Dituri Cryocells Matthew Panganiban eeiu Daniel Vucenovic Boostio Kelden Pupello Asuna Peter Mazuryk 2-0 in the upper bracket finals of North America Stage 3: Challengers Playoffs.

Both teams were already qualified for Masters: Berlin heading into the match. The match didn't carry the weight of a must-win for the teams, but it wasn't like they were just goofing around the whole match.

"We're trying not to stress too much about it because we know that we already did our job, we qualified for Berlin which was ultimately the goal," Nick "nitr0" Cannella said. "But we're still treating these matches just like any other match. We're all professional, we're all trying really hard still to win these matches, and we're still gonna try really hard to win tomorrow."

It's a good thing for 100 Thieves they weren't stressing too much about it. Sentinels came surging out of the gate on Split and won the map 13-2. The Masters: Reykjavik champions seemed well-prepared for their seeding match.

"Every single matchup, even the seeding matches, I do a lot of prep for the teams," Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan said. "I don't want to lose to anyone."

He had a couple of days to do his homework on 100 Thieves, much longer than he had to prepare for Envy Envy Inactive Marved Jimmy Nguyen Victor Victor Wong crashies Austin Roberts FiNESSE Pujan Mehta yay Jaccob Whiteaker earlier in the tournament when both teams were playing their second match of the day. ShahZaM said he definitely preferred the rest day over the quick turnaround earlier in the tournament.

nitr0 wasn't as big of a fan of it.

"I'm not a fan of having off-days in tournaments because when you start a tournament, you're in tournament mode," nitr0 said. "I'd rather play every day until the end of a tournament if I had to choose. But we tried to take yesterday as a light day, but we're also staying focused on the goal. So we had a shorter practice, and then we wanted to be well-rested. So we took an early day off, we went restaurant and went to bed earlier than normal."

Both teams took the opportunity to rest some with their extra day and prepared for it as a normal match, yet Sentinels still looked just as unbeatable as they have for most of the year. Sentinels' second map wasn't as dominant as their first, but they still won it cleanly. They took Haven 13-8 and the match 2-0.

Sentinels will play in the grand finals of the S3 playoffs on Sunday. 100 Thieves play again tomorrow in the lower bracket final.

Despite qualifying for Berlin on the first day of the tournament, 100 Thieves and Sentinels alike will still look to win the whole thing.

A tournament title would be just one of many Sentinels have racked up this year. For 100 Thieves, it will be an opportunity to prove they're still rivals to North America's best team.

"It doesn't feel like a rivalry," ShahZaM said. "They haven't beat us all year, like, not even once the entire year I'm pretty sure."

It will be up to 100 Thieves to fire back.