“We were dreaming this whole year”: BBL PCIFIC Crewen on VCT Ascension EMEA 2025 victory

As a result of BBL PCIFIC’s VCT Ascension EMEA 2025 victory, Ali ‘Crewen’ Sargin has secured a place in VCT EMEA for the very first time in his career.

Joining the organisation for the 2025 Challengers season, the sentinel helped his new team dominate throughout competitions across Türkiye and EMEA to earn the most coveted achievement for a tier-two player.

In an exclusive post-match interview with Esports Insider, Crewen discussed how the Turkish squad made the jump to tier-one and what it means to him.

“It feels amazing. We were dreaming this whole year, so it feels great for us. Really great,” shared Crewen.

Crewen had competed in EMEA’s tier-two VALORANT scene since 2021, winning several competitions, including the Türkiye 100th Anniversary VALORANT Cup Finals. 

Under his former organisation, HOWL Esports, the 20-year-old also directly competed against PCIFIC Esports in the Challengers 2024 Turkey: Birlik Split 2. Emerging from the lower bracket, HOWL fell short of the Split 2 trophy in the 1-3 Grand Final rematch against the Turkish rival.

Ahead of this year’s season, however, former rivals turned into teammates. After a disappointing second-place result at Ascension 2024, PCIFIC Esports entered an affiliate partnership with VCT EMEA partner team, BBL Esports, to form BBL PCIFIC (BCF). 

All PCIFIC Esports players continued with the newly formed brand, except for Emir ‘Celasun’ Celasun, who was replaced by Crewen.

“I joined this team to ascend EMEA. […] I can’t play without family. We are family, and I joined this team because they’re family. I just felt it,” explained the Turkish player.

The updated BBL PCIFIC roster made its Challengers 2025 debut with first-place finishes in the first two Türkiye Splits as well as EMEA’s Stage 1 competition.

Despite a mid-season roster change with the departure of Berkcan ‘ComeBack’ Şentürk to Gentle Mates, BCF remained the strongest team in Challengers Türkiye. But duelist prodigy Umut ‘lovers rock’ Pekdoğan also had to fill ComeBack’s shoes in the face of EMEA’s top Challengers teams if BCF were to finally ascend to tier-one.

“Everyone wants to ascend EMEA, but they need to work very hard. We’re just not sleeping. We’re just working on our tactics…” commented Crewen in regards to his team’s work attitude. 

“Sometimes we’re just sleeping six hours or seven hours. We’re just giving up our sleep to be good.”

He also emphasised the honest communication within the roster:

“We are not fighting each other. If we have a problem, we just talk to each other like, ‘You did wrong, so we have to talk.’ If you don’t talk [about it], it’s not gonna get fixed. So every time, we just talk to each other. That’s all. We talk, we are family. I think that’s the point, just being a family.” 

Determined to secure its second chance at winning VCT Ascension, BCF delivered an undefeated Group Stage run. The Turkish squad defeated Group B opponents FOKUS (2-0) and Twisted Minds (2-1) to advance to the Grand Final against Italian team DNSTY. 

However, the final showdown yesterday didn’t start as planned for BCF. DNSTY managed to make an impressive comeback on Lotus to claim the first map of the series 13-10. 

“I thought we were gonna win 3-0, but they just got one map,” remembered Crewen.

“We don’t like Lotus a lot, so it’s expected of them to win. But we are not going down after losing a map. We talked to each other. We said, ‘Just don’t go down. Just keep it up. We are good. Don’t overpeak.’ That’s it. We just talked to each other.”

The discussions after game one clearly paid off, as BCF went on to win three consecutive maps, Abyss (13-4), Sunset (13-11) and Corrode (13-8). 

According to Crewen, every member of the roster – and especially Coach Mert ‘KEY’ Çelebi – contributed to overall strength of BBL PCIFIC and the Ascension 2025 victory.

“Everyone has their strength. Rosé’s leadership. He’s a real leader. And lovers rock is a funny guy. He is making us so funny, and we’re just laughing together,” said the VCT newcomer.

“What can I say about myself? I’m just keeping the team together. Like when we are separate, I tell them, ‘Guys, come on. We need to talk.’ And our coach, he’s doing everything. Leadership, fun, he has everything. He’s just keeping us together. I think the biggest part of this story is gonna go to KEY. He did so much for us, and I want to say thank you to him.”

With the Ascension trophy secured, Crewen and his teammates are heading into their first season competing in VALORANT’s franchised tier-one ecosystem.

Interestingly, game developer Riot Games has already made significant changes to most agents, two maps and several guns. Whilst Ascension was played on an older version of the game, the latest Patch 11.08 introduced massive nerfs to Crewen’s beloved sentinels, Cypher and Vyse.

When asked how the changes might affect his VCT performance, Crewen responded confidently:

“It doesn’t matter. I can play anything. I can play Killjoy. I can play Chamber. It’s not gonna be bad for me. I can play Veto, as well. I can play Sentinel. It’s not gonna affect me, I think.”

The Turkish player also shared his goal for the upcoming year: “Winning Champions. We’ve always dreamed about it.”

Finally, Crewen told Esports Insider who he looks forward to playing against now that he has earned his seat at the highest level of VALORANT competition.

“I have a friend on FUT, xeus. I just want to kill him every time. And maybe ComeBack from Team Heretics. I wanna face them as well,” revealed Crewen.