Heroic‘s year has been one of ups and downs, disappointing showings at ESL Pro League and the Major balanced by a top-four finish at IEM Katowice and victories at Pinnacle Winter Series 3 and the Europe RMR A.
Pinnacle Cup Championship saw them enter the tournament as the favourite, however they suffered an early setback at the hands of fnatic forcing them to make their way through the lower bracket.
refrezh feels the ‘favourites’ tag gives his team confidence
After eliminating fnatic to avenge their first round defeat and qualify for the arena, refrezh took some time to give HLTV insight on that match, how it feels to be the favourites here in Lund, and how the team feel about their year thus far.
Congratulations on the win, how does it feel to make it to the arena?
It feels great, we always strive to make it to playoffs at every tournament we are in, because that’s where we want to be. We want to be in the arena, in the stadium, playing in front of a crowd, that’s the whole point of us travelling so much. We want to get that feeling, get that experience, and for this tournament we are also aiming for the trophy. We of course do it for every tournament, but we haven’t tried being the favourites before (smiles).
Does being the favourite bring with it any added pressure for you?
No, we don’t really feel like it’s adding pressure, it’s giving us more confidence that we are the best team here, it gives us a taste of blood. We really want to keep building on that momentum, and just go all the way.
Looking at the veto for that series, what was the idea behind the Overpass pick, as it was the map that fnatic picked against BIG?
We just went with our comfort, and Overpass is also a really big map where as T you need to have a lot of coordination with how to take map control, and how to execute. That’s going to be difficult with a new team, with a stand-in, and it just played to our favour because we feel really confident on the map.
We did see the game against BIG, and we were like “okay, we have a good idea how they play.” We knew their identity, we knew roeJ on A is always going to push and always going to play the positions he likes, so we had a good read. We weren’t really surprised by anything.
Turning to Mirage, did any nerves start to creep in when fnatic put that huge streak together in the second half to bring the score close?
It has happened before where we get some nerves when the other team is coming back, but for this game we talked about it during the pauses and the freeze-times, what went wrong. It was mostly just trading and spacing, we either were too close or too far away from each other, and identifying the problem gives us more calmness and makes it easier to mentally reset.
If you, for example, don’t know what went wrong, you are just going into the next round with no idea. We knew if we did the things properly, trading and getting map control, that we would end the round and hopefully win. There weren’t any nerves, of course we were a bit annoyed losing some stupid rounds, but we kept our cool and closed it out 16-14.
To talk more generally, how have you guys felt about your year so far? There have been ups and downs, but you generally finish around the top four in most events.
I think in the big picture we are satisfied, if you gave us the proposition of making these results 18 months ago then we would have of course taken it.
We are always striving to be better, we know that there are still things we need to improve on, but everything is going in the right direction, we are putting the hours and the work in. We just need to piece together the last couple of steps, of closing matches, being more calm on the big stages, and playing our own game.
It can be difficult when you are playing against the best teams in the world, like NAVI and FaZe, they are going to push you to the limit and either you are going to make it or break it. I think we are getting closer to winning those kind of games, that’s what you need to win tournaments, you need to beat the best team there.
Last time we played NAVI, at the Major, it was really close. We should have won on Ancient, and of course they destroyed us on the last map, but the first two maps were really close. The possibility was there, but we didn’t grab it.
