After making one of the earliest, and most valuable, pickups in the VALORANT “rostermania” craze by signing former XSET star Matthew “Cryocells” Panganiban, the 100 Thieves VALORANT team has remained very quiet.
Their silence raised some questions from within their community about the rest of their roster as there still remains a wide array of valuable and talented free agents in the market such as former OpTic Gaming player Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen and former The Guard player Trent “trent” Cairns.
To the credit of the management team for 100 Thieves VALORANT, the roster prior to the acquisition of Panganiban was already very successful.
After only a few months together, the team of predominantly new and inexperienced players managed to not only qualify for the largest and most prestigious VALORANT tournament of the year, VALORANT Champions, by handily defeating some of the best North American teams in the NA Last Chance Qualifier, but also to defeat Fnatic—one of the strongest teams in the world—while at the tournament.
With such a successful team already working under them, 100T’s management were not under a lot of pressure to make any further changes. Although there are still plenty of talented players in the free agency market, many community members consider the four remaining players from the 2022 VALORANT roster to be some of the best players in the world.
100 Thieves VALORANT in 2023
Seemingly sharing the community sentiment regarding their lineup, the organization finally announced that the 100 Thieves VALORANT roster would retain those four players and move forward with Panganiban alongside them.
In their update video titled “This is the future of 100T Valorant,” General Managed Daniel “ddk” Kapadia sat down alongside recently promoted Head Coach Michael “Mikes” Hockom to discuss the 100T VALORANT squad moving forward. In their video, Kapadia and Hockom expressed their optimism about the roster heading into 2023.
Regarding their acquisition of Panganiban, Kapadia stated that they felt he “comes with everything we’re looking for right now.” Alongside his incredible in-game abilities, Kapadia felt that Panganiban “has a lot of the intangibles people don’t see on the stat sheet,” referring to his ability to work well with his teammates and fit into the culture those players have created around 100 Thieves VALORANT.
His addition to the team instilled a great deal of confidence in both Hockom and Kapadia that 100T would be successful in 2023. Specifically, Kapadia cited that the team had a “really really high” skill ceiling with Panganiban, and that their goal with his addition was to develop into the best North American team in 2023.
Their complete starting roster is as follows:
- Peter “Asuna” Mazuryk
- Brenden “Stellar” McGrath
- Derrek “Derrek” Ha
- Sean “bang” Bezerra
- Matthew “Cryocells” Panganiban
What’s Left for 100 Thieves VALORANT in 2022?
While 100 Thieves have confirmed their starting VCT roster for 2023, their sixth man is still unknown. When Riot Games announced the franchising leagues for the 2023 VCT season, they released the roster guidelines for the construction of these teams. Inside those guidelines, Riot established that a roster minimum of six players would be needed in order to compete in their franchising league.
While the game only permits five players per team to compete at once, Riot maintains that a substitute should be ready to compete and fill in as needed in the event of an emergency. William “Will” Cheng still, who was replaced by Panganiban, still remains under contract with 100 Thieves; however, they have made no official statements about who will take the sixth man slot.
Additionally, there is one more role open on the team that needs to be filled. Following Sean Gares’s exit from the coaching staff, Kapadia announced that they were searching for a new assistant coach to help Hockom manage the workload that comes with leading a professional VALORANT team. Kapadia stated that the two-man system in place when Gares was still on the team was the best structure for the team and that they were exploring “exciting prospects” for the position headed into 2023.
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