dupreeh: "I don't fear Na`Vi at all"

After losing to SK in overtime earlier today, Astralis were the last team to advance to playoffs with a confident victory over Liquid in the fifth round.

The playoffs draw put them up against Natus Vincere in the quarter-finals, which Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen talked about in our last interview from the group stage. He also walked us through Astralis' point of view on their one-sided match against Liquid and the overtime battle versus SK:

A very straight-forward game against Liquid, talk to me about the match-up, how you expected it to go and how it went in the end.

Might as well just be honest, when we got Liquid in the draw, most of us were like "yes, that's the opponent we wanted", because in our opinion it was the weakest opponent we could get and a team we have the best map pool against, even though we can play pretty much every map. But against Liquid we knew we'd get a map we feel very confident on no matter what.

They've been really shaky this tournament, it was just a great match-up for us. I expected them to put up more of a fight, it was actually fairly easy, but I don't know, everything we did was pretty on point. We knew pretty much every time which site they were going to hit, and also individually especially Kjaerbye and device were on point. It was just great to get out of groups.

Let's go back to your loss to SK, which was a very tough battle, in the end you lost in overtime. Which rounds would you highlight from that match?

There's so many. I think it's been called the best game of the tournament so far, because there were so many ups and downs, overtime, clutches and all that stuff. We lost both pistol rounds and we didn't win any forcebuys, so in that way they were already leading 6-0 at that point. Despite losing the CT pistol we had a pretty decent side, we were really slow in getting the game going as Terrorists, but we ended up getting it to work.

Everything just got going, everyone was playing confident, gla1ve was making good calls, people won their clutches. We made a mistake when we had 15-14, we made a mistake in terms of what economy they would have, so the reason why we decided to hit A was because we were pretty confident they wouldn't have an AWP. When we dropped two guys in CT and coldzera killed both, then FalleN was on car with an AWP, we pretty much lost the round. Me and device probably could've won it, but they just outplayed us after all.

In the overtime we were up 2-0 and they gambled on the last round and stacked the B bombsite. On the CT side we lost two 1v1's in a row, and in the last round we just got slaughtered by three AWPs in a matter of ten seconds. I think it proved that we were mentally really strong, being behind 14-8 and managing to come back and keeping our heads high. I'm very proud of my team that we just kept fighting for it, so despite losing, I still believe that it helped us in some way, it proved to us that we can still win despite being behind.

Going to playoffs, you talked about being happy about the Liquid draw, you got Na`Vi in the quarter-finals which is quite the opposite. How do you feel about the match-up?

I haven't seen much of Na`Vi this tournament, they were playing really well from what I know, they only lost like twelve rounds in three maps, so that's really impressive from them. Getting Na`Vi is a match-up we have faced quite a lot, maybe not that much recently because they didn't participate in tournaments or in general didn't make it far.

Obviously, they're pretty much the team right now seen as the favourite because they've done so well in groups. Fair enough, they have, but we've done the same thing at previous Majors, just slaughtering everyone in group stages and then going into the playoffs being completely sloppy. You never know what's gonna happen to Na`Vi, this time we were sloppy in groups and we might be playing better in playoffs, we don't know. So I don't fear Na`Vi at all, I'm very much looking forward to a great match-up. I'm looking very much forward to playing the game and I'm just happy that we made the playoffs.

Make sure to check out the other interviews we've conducted over the group stage:

Day four

Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard: "We knew nV would play pug-style"

René "⁠cajunb⁠" Borg: "k0nfig's knife helped our economy"

Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo: "We studied Astralis a lot"

Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg: "I'd like to beat [...] Pimp"

Joakim "⁠disco doplan⁠" Gidetun: "We can beat everyone"

Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke: "We didn't expect much vs. G2"

Day three

William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba: "Our preparation was limited"

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen: "allu's 1v2 was key"

Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács: "We came with only one goal"

Mathias "⁠MSL⁠" Lauridsen: "We had a great bootcamp"

Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer: "Didn't expect Dust2"

Day two

Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski: "I hope Gambit will be nervous"

Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz: "It was important for us to start well"

Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman: "[YOLO teams] will go far"

Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin: "It doesn't feel like we won"

Gabriel "⁠FalleN⁠" Toledo: "Gonna fight as hard as we can"

Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong: "Confident about our map pool"

Day one

Fabien "⁠kioShiMa⁠" Fiey: "Everyone's happy with their roles"

Markus "⁠pronax⁠" Wallsten: "I'm happy it went to Train"

Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire: "It was hard after jdm's 1v5"

Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev: "Hope to show beautiful CS"

Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski: "It's always close vs. OpTic"

Ricardo "⁠fox⁠" Pacheco: "We played 12-14 hours a day"

Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon: "FaZe can do pretty well here"

Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov: "We prepared for everyone"