Sentinels Zellsis reflects on the LOUD loss "Everyone's just pretty sad"

Last Night, LOUD and Sentinels faced each other in a high stakes best-of-three. With both teams coming off a loss, the series was a must-win for them to stay in contention for Mid-Season playoffs.

The game concluded with LOUD taking down Sentinels in two maps. The loss has put the North American darlings in a questionable position, making their Mid-Season playoffs spot in jeopardy.

Following the tough loss, Strafe sat down with Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro to talk about the team’s recent results, the playoff chances, and more.

[Interviewer] How are you feeling?

Not great.

[Interviewer] What has been the problem with Sentinels? You have come close but have had troubles closing today and last time?

Not really sure what the problem is right now. I think, I mean, for the series in particular, I think I just played really poorly. I think Loud had a really good anti on us, especially me, like individually. I felt like they really abused me.

I think in our past matches though, I think we just didn't have a lot of time after Madrid as a team. We, I mean, we had visa issues with JohnQT and then we came back and we instantly went into matches.

So, not a lot of time to change things, not a lot of time to practice as well as a team. But we've been doing everything in our power to keep grinding, counter burnout. We, I mean, it sucks to like, say things like that because it just sounds like excuses. So, I mean, we're definitely trying to do everything in our power to win.

[Interviewer] Was LOUD’s deadlock a problem at all? Was that a reason for Lotus not going Sentinels’ way?

No, we expected them to play the Deadlock pick, because they played it before. So we knew going into that they were going to have a, we knew going into that what their comp was going to be basically, unless they were hiding something, which obviously they weren't, they played the deadlock comp.

So, yeah, we weren't, we weren't caught off guard by any means. I think they, I think we're having really slow starts right now, on our defenses specifically. So it's really tough. But no, I think Lotus just came down to us making minimal mistakes and then also, they just played really well.

[Interviewer] Lotus hasn’t been going Sentinels way, Was there ever a talk about them moving away from map?

No, I think, we have like a team talk every, every night before game day, on, like, what are maps we like, what maps the other team likes, how the veto is gonna go, we play out the scenario, all that, all that stuff.

So, obviously there's always, there could always be talks to change maps or do certain things. But at the end of the day, like, that's what we do is what we come together as a team. It's what we decide and then, that's what we go with.

So there's no, there's no hindsight over here that, you know, I'm gonna be like, oh, we should have played a different map or we should have done something else differently. Like we went in with the game plan we had and it just didn't work out for us.

[Interviewer] What would the team talk about after the tough loss today?

I'm not really sure what we're going to talk about today. I don't know if we'll even have a team talk. We just kind of need to focus on winning the game against FURIA, so I think we're just going to focus on that.

Maybe take tomorrow off. I'm not really sure when the next game is, maybe a couple of days. We'll see, I'm sure we'll VOD review this and go over everything and talk about things, stuff like that. But I think right now everyone's just pretty sad.

[Interviewer] Mentality is a big part of esports and you have been a ‘vibe merchant’ someone that boosts the team’s confidence. But there must be times when you feel a little low or aren’t performing as well. How do you handle such a day?

Today, I did a pretty poor job of being the vibe merchant, like I was definitely trying to stay in the game. But obviously, I was playing very poorly and I was trying really hard to not play poorly and I think it just made me play even worse, which is, you know, my fault obviously.

But yeah, obviously it's my job. It's a very important job to keep my team level-headed, keep everyone, you know, vibes up everything like that. I think I did a pretty poor job today.

But I think on this team specifically when, you know, usually I'm having a bad, it's it's, it's a very rare case for me to not be the vibe merchant, I guess for us. But today it was definitely one of those cases, just nothing was going right for me. I felt like I was just throwing away rounds, throwing away duels, throwing away advantages, not really helping in any way.

But Zekken was there for me, on, you know, later in the series, Zekken was there for me, you know, telling me it's all right when I would die or something like that or something would happen to me and I just wasn't feeling very good, Zekken was there for me.

So I would have to give a shout out to him. He's like my little brother, I guess like, you know, I'm always the big brother making sure everyone's taken care of and everyone's right. But, you know, sometimes the big brother needs some help too. So, you know, a yeah, Zekken was there for me today so I greatly appreciated that and then, you know, there was some team talks after where, you know, we were talking about me and talking about, you know, the mood the last couple of weeks and stuff like that and where we could be doing better. So, I'm pretty happy about that, but we'll go back to the drawing board.

[Interviewer] You said yourself that Sentinels haven't had a break, similar to Fnatic who went on to win two tournaments and were burned out by the end of VALORANT Champions. Do you think somewhere needing that break or just missing a tournament is fine?

Yeah, I definitely think for some reason, Valorant just feels a lot worse in terms of burnout. Not really sure what the case may be.

As Fnatic's case, I think. Yeah, obviously, I don't know how they stayed at the top for so long. I mean, they ran tournament back, like kick off into Tokyo and they won, which is really big and I'm learning that it's very hard as well.

Like this is my first time being at the top, top where we won, I won a tier one tournament.

But in our case, I think it's more so if we, if, if we make it, I don't really see us. Obviously, we're going to continue to work. Like that's the main thing that we've been doing, which is why we feel burnt out or we feel like people are just, you know, rolling us over sometimes. In this case, it was LOUD.

But for us, we're not really, I think we've had one day off, maybe two days since coming back from Madrid like even when we didn't have John, we were still practicing with curry with me IGL'ing.

So yeah, I just think there's not a lot of downtime for us right now and if we don't make it like, yeah, it's, it can be seen as a blessing but obviously me as a competitor, I always want to win. I care a lot, like really badly. It's not a fun feeling to have to not make it and sit here and watch everyone else play.

So this is not a very good feeling but if it is, if that's the case we don't make it and we have to take a little break and we need to reset to come back for the next split, I would not be mad at that either but you know, it just depends where, where, what the cards hold for us has been struggling a lot.

[Interviewer] Good luck with the games. I hope you have a good night!

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Sentinels will next play against FURIA in the final game of the split. While playoff qualification is questionable, it is not out of sight. If all the conditions meet, Sentinels can still qualify for the Mid-season Playoffs.

You can follow the game on YouTube or Twitch. You can also follow the game on Strafe. Follow the Strafe Esports YouTube for all the upcoming VALORANT interviews VODs.

Featured Image Credits:  Adela Sznajder // Colin Young-Wolff // Zen

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