Evil Geniuses has officially signed Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker and Jacob “icy” Lange to its VALORANT roster today. The two players will join the returning trio Derrek “Derrek” Ha, Nicholas “NaturE” Garrison and Phat “Supamen” Le.
While EG took a step back in 2024 after its 2023 world championship, the organization has now brought in a player once recently regarded as VALORANT’s best duelist.
Someone Cooked Here
The addition of icy was announced earlier in the day. icy played for G2 during the 2024 season, helping the roster core that qualified through Ascension reach the playoffs of Champions 2024. Coincidentally, icy was dropped this offseason in favor of the last remaining EG player from their Champions 2023 run, Alexander “jawgemo” Mor. Icy was also on the EG reserve roster in 2023.
Yay competed as a stand-in for Evil Geniuses during this offseason at the Sen City Classic. EG also competed with Tyler “sym” Porter at that event, though he returned to TSM in Challengers. At the Sen City Classic, yay said that things were “clicking right away” as soon as he started playing with EG.
With icy arriving alongside him, yay will not take on the primary duelist role he was once famous for. Following the 2022 season, in which yay established himself as a world-class duelist player for OpTic, yay was highly sought after by all the partnered teams. He would land with Cloud9, but nothing went his way over the next two years. He quickly departed C9, had a dismal run with Disguised in NA Challengers, then found himself in the Pacific league with BLEED in 2024.
BLEED was removed from the VALORANT Champions Tour by Riot completely, due to “failure to comply with critical reporting requirements and other key obligations under the TPA.” This was part of a much larger story at BLEED involving alleged missed payments and the CEO’s legal troubles.
Did Evil Geniuses put together a winning lineup with yay and icy? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum.
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