Photo by Liu Yicun/Riot Games
After a year of “almost” finishes, Paper Rex ended their 2026 campaign to regional rival T1 in heartbreaking fashion, losing 2-1 to finish 7th-8th at Champions Shanghai. In the third map of the series, PRX squandered what looked to be an unloseable advantage, giving up a 10-3 lead to lose 13-11.
PRX head coach alecks spoke on the fumbling loss, the root of the issue, and how the team can manage to rebuild their mental to reach their previous trophy-lifting heights. When the lights are bright, PRX seems to have trouble closing out games. The T1 result wasn’t just a one-off incident either. In its previous series, the team lost 2-0 to LOUD after holding 8-4 and 9-3 leads at halftime.
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This year, the team has played more Valorant than any team has ever played in the partnership era, playing 117 maps in 43 matches at every event that they could play at this year. The team has also played in four best-of-five series, losing two grand finals on the international stage.
“I mean, it’s a by-product of losing so many finals, you know what I mean?” alecks said of his team’s struggles.
With the offseason now underway for his team, alecks was very transparent about the team’s struggles, pinpointing mental struggles as an area the team needs to work on.
“I think that no matter how much we try not to push it away, when we go to the off-season, there needs to be some deep mental work, like actual… We need to get more people and sports psychologists to fix this,” he said. “If not, we will never fix [it].”
In what he described as a classic case of the team beating itself, alecks took nothing away from the opponents, highlighting the self-inflicted causes for PRX’s shocking early exit.
“I think we are overwhelmed by our own selves,” he said. “As much as I like to say T1 [played well], we win pistol, we are 9-3 up, like this is unacceptable. It’s a stupid way to lose. The only thing I can point to is either I did not prepare them well enough, and that’s definitely on me, and the other thing would be we need to figure this shit out.”
