FaZe Clan are headed to the lower bracket finals of the North American VALORANT Champions Tour playoffs, where they are set to play XSET at 4 p.m. ET on June 25. The winner of the match will become the second team to qualify for Stage 2 Masters Copenhagen.
Earlier this weekend, OpTic Gaming became the first NA team to book their ticket to Masters; they await the winner of the match between XSET and FaZe in the grand finals.
To reach the lower bracket finals, FaZe had to overcome NRG, and their best-of-three series was closely contested until Map 3. FaZe ran away with Ascent, beginning the map with a 9-0 run that was too much for NRG to overcome.
The top performer of the series was FaZe’s Phat “supamen” Le. The controller player typically takes a back seat for the team’s two biggest carries, Andrej “babybay” Francisty and Quan “dicey” Tran. That wasn’t the case against NRG. On top of an overall impressive series, supamen also netted himself an amazing ace on Ascent.
“I literally told my whole team right before that third map, I said listen, ‘It is what is is. We got this far. No one expected us to do it, so let’s go out there and play like it’s scrims,'” babybay said.
FaZe battle XSET for Copenhagen
Coming into the playoffs, FaZe Clan was the lowest seeded of the remaining three teams. Many consider OpTic and XSET to be the top two teams in NA at the moment, meaning FaZe head into the lower bracket finals as underdogs.
XSET were sent to the lower bracket by OpTic after losing their best of five series 1-3. Even COVID-19 wasn’t enough to slow down the momentum of OpTic. That said, XSET were no pushovers against NA’s best. Now, only FaZe stands in the way of their rematch and a ticket to Copenhagen.
Fans can expect an explosive Operator duel between dicey and XSET’s Matthew “Cryocells” Panganiban.
“Expect a lot of duels because [XSET] are a very duel-y team right now,” babybay said. “They love to fight … it’s gonna be a brawl.”
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