Tarik ‘tarik’ Celik has offered his insights on Sentinels’ ongoing struggles in the VCT Americas Valorant league.
Sentinels are all but out of the running for a spot in the VCT Americas playoffs after May 6’s surprising loss to Evil Geniuses. The team currently lies in ninth place in the league, with a 2-5 record, with only two matches left to play in the round-robin stage.
It has been a nightmare season for Sentinels, who have failed to live up to the hype that accompanied the squad’s off-season overhaul. Sentinels signed four new players, including LOUD’s world champion duo of Bryan ‘pANcada’ Luna and Gustavo ‘Sacy’ Rossi, and hired a new coaching staff, led by Donald ‘SyykoNT’ Muir.
The first change happened even before the season started as Jimmy ‘Marved’ Nguyen was signed as a substitute player to replace Hunter ‘SicK’ Mims, who was internally suspended after being arrested for criminal trespassing.
Three weeks into the season, Sentinels dropped SyykoNT and promoted assistant coach Adam ‘Kaplan’ Kaplan. Shortly afterward, Marved began playing with the team for what was supposed to be a temporary stay before it was announced that he would replace Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo until the end of the split.
Questioned by viewers on his stream if Sentinels were wrong to dismiss SyykoNT, tarik said that “there’s no clear answer” to the team’s current issues. According to him, the lack of stability has played a decisive role in their ongoing struggles.
“The fact that we made so many changes going into the season sucks because there’s no consistency, and that’s just going to lead to inconsistent results,” he said.
“We should have had our set team, coach, management, everything. Obviously, things weren’t working out, so they had to make changes, but it sucks that it worked out that way.”
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tarik went on to compare the team’s situation with that of Disguised, who are facing relegation in the NA Challengers league despite the high-profile addition of superstar Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker.
“You can’t rely on winning when there are so many changes happening around you,” he noted.
tarik talks TenZ criticism
The Sentinels content creator also leaped to the defense of TenZ, who was subject to intense criticism following the team’s rough start to the season. This prompted his fiancée, Kyedae ‘Kyedae’ Shymko, to ask fans to show empathy for the player.
tarik noted that the manner in which Sentinels were defeated by Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses shows that the team’s issues went beyond TenZ.
“At least we got our answer,” tarik said. “Honestly, Kyedae is probably about this, because TenZ was getting a lot of undeserved hate. There is no one problem. The problem is we don’t have a stable roster. That’s the problem.
“Scapegoating on Tyson was f***ing ridiculous.”
Sentinels are slated to face KRÜ Esports on May 14 and FURIA on May 18 in their last two matches in the VCT Americas’ regular season.
