NiKo: Didn't expect Cache [vs. North]

FaZe had an up and down group stage performance at the event in Kiev, Ukraine, losing to HellRaisers and North but advancing with a 3-2 score in the end.

In a talk with Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač, we found out about his feelings after IEM Katowice, the match against SK and who he'd like to face in the playoffs.

IEM Katowice was the first even where you got pretty far, you got to the finals, can you tell me about the feeling achieving that and how did you feel looking forward with that result?

I came into FaZe pretty confident, we didn't expect we would make the finals, but we tried to go as deep as possible in that tournament, to get as good as a result as possible. We are still not sure how far we can go, so we didn't put up any goals for this tournament. We will try to go as deep as possible this tournament as well, maybe even win. In general, I feel pretty comfortable playing in this team, everyone has the same goal, everyone is on the same page so everything is going as planned.

Today's first match was against North, it turned out to be Cache, a map they played more recently but before they didn't really like it before. Did you expect it to end up on Cache, did that surprise you?

We didn't expect that they would ban Inferno, but they did for some reason. We expected it would be Nuke or Mirage, we didn't expect it would be Cache, but when we saw it was available we went for it because it was a good option, North didn't play that map before. On the map, we lost a lot of clutches, we lost both pistols, we started as T 6-0 down, on CT 4-0 down, that two combined is already 10 rounds for them.

Can you think of a moment that you think decided the match against North?

I think the most important round was when MSL clutched the 1v2, four altogether, killing kio while he was falling. That was lucky if you ask me, lucky for him and unlucky for us. That round decided a lot in that match.

In the match against SK, you had a good start, but their A executes were pretty effective in the end. Seeing that they are pretty known for them, I presume you prepared for that a bit. What was the most difficult part of shutting down that A execute?

To be honest, we didn't prepare at all for SK and I believe they didn't prepare for us either. We both played our own game, but I played pretty bad on CT and that's why they were allowed to do their A executes. My bad play on CT was the only reason they took that many rounds.

The pistol on your T side was pretty weird and chaotic, what was happening in the TeamSpeak during that round?

There was chaos on TeamSpeak from when we were in a 2v2 and then when kio was left in a 1v2, it was a mess. Then we managed to quiet down and let him play and that's what he did. kio is really good in clutches in recent times so we can count on him in those situations.

Looking forward, is there anyone you would like to play?

I'd like to, if it's possible, get both North and HellRaisers so we can get revenge. No preferences except that. 

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.