lmbt: "We stayed calm until the end"

After a tough, 3-2 Swiss group stage run, MOUZ reached the playoffs where they exacted revenge on G2 in the quarter-finals and Liquid in the semi-finals. The final game they played was against Natus Vincere, in front of a small crowd of fans rooting for Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev and co.

lmbt currently thinks of mouz as a top eight team

MOUZ took the 2-1 win, after which we talked to the team's coach Sergey "⁠lmbt⁠" Bezhanov about winning in the Cybersport Arena, the veto and the comeback on Mirage.

Firstly, I want to get your thoughts on getting the tournament win here in Ukraine and in front of this crowd?

We didn't expect to win it from the beginning. We took the tournament as practice in general, a lot of people said that already in interviews, but then we started getting in shape pretty quickly, day by day, and I'm really happy. I think it's only my second StarLadder here in Ukraine, but I'm happy that I won it. 

You played [in the Cybersport Arena] before though, in CS 1.6?

Yeah I played a lot of matches here in 1.6 and Natus Vincere was the top 1 team in the world back then, I was always losing finals to them for some WCG or ESWC spot. That was pretty hard, and it's not like I got some revenge, but it's a really good feeling to finally win.

Tell me about the veto coming in, I guess a lot of people, me included, expected you to ban Overpass, but you banned Inferno and then lost on Overpass. Going into the match, what went wrong, I guess you were kind of expecting that?

Well, we were ready to play three maps, but we know that they are really comfortable on Inferno, against any team in the world. We were playing Overpass recently, we were not practicing it, but we were playing it. And we were feeling pretty comfortable against the CIS style on it, that's why we decided that if we take a pistol, things might go well on this map.

Unfortunately, it was the first map, we weren't warmed up, the communication wasn't good and stuff like this. That's why we lost it without even showing our teeth. But after the first half we already told ourselves: "Let's try to get a few rounds, just to get in the game, we will win Mirage anyway, no matter what, and then we will fight on the third map. So here, let's just chill". We were not tilted at all, we were smiling after we lost the map, which is rare. So everything was fine.

On Mirage, the CT side was pretty much perfect, but then on the T side issues started popping up. What was the main issue, was it just s1mple going crazy?

It's not only s1mple who was going crazy, we were making some misplays and miscommunications again, but what I liked from this Mirage and the, I don't know, 25 Mirages we played in the last two months, we stayed calm and decided to give them match point, we decided to play for overtime and we won it in the end. We stayed calm until the end, that's what I liked.

With this win, at a top-tier tournament, with all the top teams here, where do you think mouesesports is? Where do you rank yourself after this?

I mean, I'm super happy. As you know, we are not participating in IEM Katowice, so I'm happy we won this, it will give us a lot of motivation to keep working hard. We are currently top 8 and we confirmed it, that's the most important thing for me as a coach. We knew that the Legend status is just a status, that then you have to stick there, you have to stick in the top eight and you have to work on it hard. That is kind of how I think of us now - top eight.

So the outlook going forward, just working hard? Is there anything special you have in mind, for the team, what you need to work on?

Not that much, to be honest. We were here not even checking our map pool, we were checking how we react in hard situations and stuff because we were not preparing that hard for opponents during the whole tournament. We know that now the online season is coming and we will just focus on the leagues. We have a lot of LAN tournaments upcoming as well, but it will be mostly just regular work, routine to wich we will come back to. After a few days off, we will watch Katowice, and then we will get back to our routine and start progressing.