100 Thieves’ Will says win over Fnatic at Champions was ‘big confidence booster’

The last time 100 Thieves played on the international stage, they beat every European team they faced. Their roster is drastically different now, but their winning streak against EMEA teams continued as they beat Fnatic in their opening group match at VALORANT Champions.

Despite being the last team to qualify for VALORANT Champions via the North American Last Chance Qualifier and having a young roster, 100T beat the much more experienced and favored Fnatic. The European team is widely considered one of the best in the world and were ranked fourth in Nerd Street’s rankings of the 16 teams at Champions.

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“I have a lot of respect for their IGL [Jake “Boaster” Howlett]. Everyone on that team is super talented and good at their role, so it’s definitely a big confidence booster,” William "Will" Cheng said after the match about beating Fnatic.

He said that the victory meant the team could “punch back” against any team. Still, Will was level-headed when thinking about the rest of the competition and where they stood.

“We haven’t been able to play every single team at this event so it’s kind of hard to gauge what team is the best right now,” he said. “Even Leviatán when we were watching yesterday their games looked super impressive.”

Despite having some players test positive for COVID, which led to the team having to play the match from their hotel room, 100 Thieves were well-prepared, both mentally and in terms of what they might see from Fnatic.

On the mental side, Will credited the team’s general manager Daniel “ddk” Kapadia with bringing in a sports psychologist to help them be in a good mental state despite the circumstances.

In the server, 100T were prepared to play Pearl, the newest VALORANT map.

“We know that Fnatic like playing the newer maps as soon as they come out, so we knew that in the back of our minds,” Will said. “We didn’t expect them to first pick it, but I thought that maybe they would float it for third. We definitely prepared for Pearl in our couple scrims that we could.”

Last year at Champions, Fnatic were one of the best teams on Fracture, which was then the newest maps at the time.

Read more: OpTic reach VALORANT Champions playoffs after beating Brazilian rival LOUD

On Friday, 100 Thieves ended up winning Pearl, which Fnatic picked for Map 1. After a 6-6 halftime score with 100T on defense, the NA team won six of 10 rounds on offense to take the map 13-10. The second map, Haven, was 100 Thieves’ pick, but Fnatic won it comfortably 13-7 to push the series to a deciding third map.

On Haven, 100 Thieves ran out with a 5-0 lead on defense before Fnatic took the next six rounds. Just like the first map, this one was 6-6 at the half. 100T came back even stronger in the second half as they won all but one round on offense to take the map 13-7 and the match 2-1.

The third map was truly a team effort as all five 100 Thieves players had more kills than deaths on Haven. Overall, Will was the standout player with a 300 average combat score (ACS), a +21 kill/death differential and 14 first kills -- twice as many as any of his teammates.

100 Thieves will face DRX on Saturday to determine which team will be the first from Group D to advance to the Champions playoffs.

Lead photo credit: Riot Games