ropz: "After the Major, I had to focus on school a lot"

MOUZ went strength for strength, picking up their second win of the tournament and their first ever BO3 win over SK on the second day of the competition in Ukraine. The European squad started strong on Mirage, but only closed it out 16-14, lost Cobblestone but secured 2-0 status by claiming the victory on Inferno.

Reading SK on Inferno helped ropz rack up frags as CT

We caught up with Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool after the game and went into detail about the SK game and also touched on the MOUZ' recent online struggles.

You drew SK after getting the first win, what were you thinking about the draw, going against a pretty strong opponent?

Yeah, SK is one of the best teams right now, obviously. We didn't feel it was a bad draw for us at all. We never won against them, which is bad, but [because of the history] we don't feel any pressure to beat them. We were just playing our game and doing what we wanted, we just felt really confident.

Starting off with Mirage, you had a good situation at one point, I think it was 14-8 for you, but in the end, it was pretty close, typical mousesports style I guess, you struggled to close out the map. Why do you think that is, what was the issue there?

Obviously, in our team, communication is the biggest issue. We can't really give the fastest info, unlike teams that have five guys from the same country. So I think that is the biggest issue, but obviously, we can react better and keep an eye out for what our teammates are doing. But I think the communication was the biggest problem there.

Going on to Cobblestone, did you kind of expect that that map was going to go their way, considering the map pool? They also had a great start to the game...

We are pretty good on Cobblestone I would say, but I think that game was decided by the pistols. We didn't even have a game plan, we were calling stuff on the go, what feels good, and we knew that contact plays would work against them. At the beginning, we did some smoke strats on B, that didn't really work so we started playing fast contact plays and then we got some T rounds and the 9-6 half.

The last map you played was Inferno and you personally had a very good CT side there, what was the key, why was it going so well for you?

I started off pretty slow on Inferno, oskar and sunny were pretty strong on the T side, but then going to the CT side we lost the pistol, that was a 1v3 against coldzera so that was not good, but we just played calm, got the gun rounds. I think I was reading them pretty good, we had some B pushes and we knew where they were. I was just adjusting, playing on A site, playing in pit, sometimes rotating to B... I was just reading them pretty well in my opinion.

Before this tournament, as a team, you were kind of in a slump, you failed the qualifier for Katowice. How have things been for you personally, combining playing CS with school, going to the Major? How is CS going for you at the moment?

For me, it's on and off. After the Major, I had to focus on school a lot. We had a few days off so I could catch up with school. We didn't really practice that much, we thought that we would qualify for Katowice but it obviously didn't go that way. Yeah, for myself, I'm just balancing school and CS, trying to do good in both. Right now, I want to play more CS because I feel l'm not at my peak yet. I just want to play more and get more wins.