With new Sentinels VALORANT head coach Adam Kaplan taking the reins heading into a very important super week in VCT Americas, the new man in charge is making his first major decision: moving Tyson “TenZ” Ngo to the bench temporarily to rest and bringing substitute Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen into the starting roster for the next two matches.
Kaplan confirmed the change in a competitive update released today, in which he reiterated that the team as a whole is still moving full steam ahead. “This is not a reset,” Kaplan said. “This is not a start over, this is a continuation of the work we’ve been putting in since the start of this roster.”
The head coach alluded to just a couple of the issues that have been plaguing Sentinels’ superstar TenZ in the announcement, confirming that he does in fact have COVID and mentioning the finger injury that bothered him during the team’s match against Leviatán. TenZ has had to additionally contend with sky-high expectations placed on himself, while also providing support as a partner to his fiancé Kyedae, who’s been going through her own very serious health issues.
With TenZ taking a much-needed break, Marved will step into Sentinels’ starting roster for their upcoming matches against both LOUD and MIBR. Marved, who started the year unsigned, joined Sentinels as their sixth man back in March in the wake of the legal and personal issues surrounding previous sixth man SicK.
The roster moves being made for the VCT Americas super week confirm suspicions from the community that Marved would be stepping in after spotting Sacy playing initiator while duo-ing with teammate Zekken. Sacy made his name as a world-class initiator during LOUD’s championship-level 2022 season but switched to controller soon after joining Sentinels.
Sentinels will likely go into the super week with Sacy back on initiator, Zekken playing the duelist role with Jett, and Marved taking on his proven controller role that he excelled in while with OpTic.
