Sentinels eliminate FPX in dominant 2-0 sweep

Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #3 N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid have defeated FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #8 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) yosemite Wang Lei (王磊) in a 2-0 sweep in the group B elimination match at Champions 2024 to eliminate FPX and conclude their season. Sentinels advance to the decider match, where they will battle Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) yoman Chae Young-moon (채영문) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) for a playoffs spot.

Coming into this match, Sentinels most recently suffered a substantial 2-0 defeat at the hands of Gen.G, while FPX just barely lost to Team Heretics Team Heretics Europe Rank #1 MiniBoo Dominykas Lukaševičius Wo0t Mert Alkan RieNs Enes Ecirli benjyfishy Benjamin David Fish Boo Ričardas Lukaševičius in a 2-1 thriller that saw the third map go 15-13 to Los Niños. Sentinels would seek to recover their championship form after a disappointing performance in the Americas playoffs to push past their first-ever Chinese opponent.

The match began with FPX's pick of Bind, where they defeated Heretics in their opening match using a unique Yoru and Chamber composition. Sentinels made one adjustment, with johnqt switching off of their previous Deadlock pick and returning to the standard Viper.

After dropping the first three rounds to FPX, Sentinels won four attack rounds in a row with clinical ultimate cycling to go up 4-3. However, their attack rounds without ultimates fell flat; FPX quickly stabilized to an 8-4 half off the back of consistent openers from Autumn and multikills from Life .

Sentinels rallied to narrowly win the second pistol round. From there, they chained together nine straight rounds to close out the map 13-8, expertly exploiting the Yoru's inability to break through chokepoints with grounded crossfires on the sites. zekken came alive, topping the scoreboard with 20 kills to 13 deaths and 262 ACS; only Autumn was able to match him in kills from the side of FPX.

On Sentinels' Lotus pick, FPX brought out yet another unusual composition, featuring a Chamber, two initiators, and no duelist. Sentinels returned to a standard composition, again substituting a Viper in for Deadlock.

Without a duelist, FPX were unable to break Sentinels' defensive setups except when Autumn found an opening pick with the Operator or AAAAY used his Thrash to create space. Sentinels identified their opponents' weakness almost immediately and capitalized to secure a dominant 9-3 half.

It fell to FPX to leverage their composition to come back on defense, but it was too late; Sentinels carried their momentum forward to take Lotus 13-5. zekken once again stomped through the server with six first kills and 288 ACS, this time supported by TenZ who matched zekken with 19 kills to 11 deaths.

With their loss, FPX is the first team to be eliminated from Champions. This performance comes as a disappointment after FPX closely challenged Gen.G and Team Heretics at Masters Shanghai.

For SEN City, it doesn't get any easier from here; they will advance and face Gen.G for the second time this tournament in the group decider. One Masters Madrid finalist will advance to the playoffs and the other's year will come to an end.

“It's been a while since we won a series, so hopefully we show a better form than what we showed Gen.G the first time,” said TenZ when asked his thoughts on the upcoming match.

Sentinels will demonstrate whether they continue their recovery when they return to the Champions stage on Aug. 10.