After a hot start to the 2023 North American VALORANT Challengers season, the G2 Esports roster has experienced a massive falloff in the second half, leading to them now sitting on the brink of elimination. For most of the roster, this is an all-too-familiar feeling.
In the first split of the season, G2 went 4-1 in group stage play and reached the final of the Mid-Season Faceoff despite an opening round upset. But since losing to M80 in the MSF final at the end of March, they’ve been on a horrendous slide, losing all five matches in split two and losing in the opening round of Challengers playoffs decisively to Oxygen on May 31.
For the players involved, it’s something that’s happened before on previous teams, albeit not this quickly. Four of the five players on G2 know what it’s like to hit on great early success, only to watch it all slip away.
For Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan and Michael “dapr” Gulino, this happened at the highest possible level during their time with Sentinels. Halfway through 2021, Sentinels looked like the best VALORANT team in the world, having ran through all of NA after picking up TenZ and then dominating Masters Reykjavik without dropping a single map. But their hold on the top tier of VALORANT slipped toward the end of the year, only for that roster never to get near that level again during all of 2022.
Erik “penny” Penny and Maxim “wippie” Shepelev, in addition to coach Ian “Immi” Harding, also know what that feeling is like. In 2021, they made a surprising run with Version1 in NA Challengers to reach Masters Reykjavik but never came close to the international level again across 2021 and 2022.
Related: NA Challengers 2023: VALORANT scores, schedule, and standings
It’s not hard to see what’s wrong with G2 since there’s a noticeable lack of confidence and playmaking during official matches. Across split two and the playoffs so far, the G2 players are some of the lowest ranked in categories like VLR player rating, ACS, KAST percentage, and K/D.
Coach Immi said on Twitter the morning after their loss to Oxygen that the players “have been working extremely hard” and just need to apply what they do in practice to their matches. He also noted that they’ve gone on lower bracket runs before, referencing their MSF lower bracket run, but that run didn’t occur on the heels of a seven-match losing streak.
The former V1 core on G2 will need to overcome a familiar face in vanity if they want to keep their dreams of Ascension alive.
