sgares: "Looking to bounce back"

Cloud9 started off with a solid lead on de_train as Terrorists, but EnVyUs took it back and after switching sides, the score was soon sitting at six map points. Cloud9 came back and won a map for the first time against a European team since bringing in their new duo.

de_inferno was a whole other story though, as EnVyUs never gave Cloud9 any chances and with a 16-2 scoreline stormed onto de_cache. In the end, EnVyUs took over after leading 13-12 and won three in a row to send Cloud9 to the lower bracket of group B.

The team's in-game leader, Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares shared his thoughts on the three maps and their Virtus.pro match-up ahead:

The first map was going back and forth, you took it in the end, what do you think made it go your way?

I think we played great, honestly, on a lot of the gunrounds we were able to execute our strats. Towards the end of the T half was when we kinda solved their defence, when they had Kio pushing up really agressively and then they had Happy AWPing towards inner and NBK playing close lower and stuff like that. He'd always pre-smoke lower, which made it a problem to hit inner fast. It kinda took a dimension out of our game and allowed quick rotations for them. It took me towards the end to grasp everything that was going on and solve that, so once we got it, I was certain we could win T rounds at that point. CT side, I honestly think we could've won that match in regulation if we didn't lose that second round in eco. We lost two second-round ecos, once on Cache and once on Train, and it almost cost us the Train match. In my opinion it probably did cost us the Cache match. I think it was all gunrounds, I was confident in our ability at that point, because even though they clearly practiced Train a lot and they beat Virtus.pro, I felt like we were a little bit more prepared on that map and we did things that they probably hadn't seen. 

The second map was obviously kind of a white-wash, what was your mindset going into the second map, you were probably a little bit hyped, since you had a chance to take them down in two?

They just did a really great job of closing out rounds on Inferno. They were always getting opening entries, but even with those entries we were pretty much always able to grind back to two-on-twos, three-on-threes, completely winable situations like the pistol round and I think even the first gunround. But them getting those picks really hindered our ability to run the tactics that I was trying to call. I don't call strats on spawn per say, but I will suggest something that I would call in the round and it really hindered what I was suggesting that I would like to go into. We had to move on the fly, because they kept getting picks every round across the map. I was aware of how they liked playing mid, how they pre-molly and smoke and stuff like that, you really have to abuse their timings. If you wanna beat them on Inferno, fnatic does a great job of that, and we don't really have the experience against a team like them to do that. Even though I know the ideas that I want to portray and we'd gone over it in practice, it's one thing to go over it, but it's another thing to experience it. Some things worked, some things didn't, we lost a lot of late-game scenarios and we just couldn't break their money, they kept breaking ours and they snowballed.

The third map was going down to the wire, you had a fair shot at winning it, but in the end they prevailed, what was the problem there? You had them figured out, but it still didn't quite click. 

To start off CT side, losing that second-round eco and giving them three early rounds on their T side really hurt us, because, again, on the gunrounds, we were probably winning more rounds than losing. For us to come back and win that many CT rounds kinda shows our improvement on CT side. T side, again, we pretty much solved their defence pretty quick, actually. We found out they were giving us mid and we were able to take mid, we just played super sloppy, we can't allow people to push door when we take fast mid. Again, they ended up getting entry frags that they probably shouldn't have. Guys were able to push door like twice on their gunrounds and got entries, then the sandbag round, that's like three rounds where they got entry frags. Recovering from that on CT Cache, when people can fall back into sites and play really passive is extremely difficult. But the rounds where they didn't get those entry frags, I felt like we played well. It sucks to lose, but there are a lot of positives to take away from that match. We just gotta clean up some of our errors and I'm just glad we made some of those errors now, so we can go over them, we're still in the tournament and looking to bounce back tomorrow. 

What are your expectations overall and what do you expect from Virtus.pro tomorrow?

Virtus.pro is a great team, they're a lot different than EnVyUs, because their map pool is so much deeper, it's gonna be a lot more difficult playing them and a lot more tactic-based. EnVyUs has better aim, but they rely on their aim more unlike Virtus.pro, who rely heavily on tactics, smokes and flashes and things like that. I'm pretty confident playing them, we always played pretty well when we played them in my opinion. Honestly, I love playing those guys, as well as NiP, so I'm really looking forward to it.

Cloud9's life in the tournament depends first and foremost on their tomorrow's match against Virtus.pro, which should begin at around 15:30 .