s1mple: "After we lost ELEAGUE and the Major, I started to practice even harder"

We spoke to BLAST Pro Series' Most Valuable Player, Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev, to get his thoughts on Na`Vi's first victory in four months.

Natus Vincere became the BLAST Pro Series champions following a 2-0 win over Ninjas in Pyjamas, who took their opponents to double digits on both maps but ultimately fell, with s1mple completing another fantastic event to secure his sixth MVP medal in 2018.

After the grand final ceremony, we got a hold of the Ukrainian to get his thoughts on the two close maps and to look ahead into the rest of 2018 to find out what the team have set their sights on.

Let's first talk about the grand final and Mirage, first of all, where at one point it started looking fairly dangerous before you took over again in the second half - what happened there?

We discussed before the game that they have the three best strats, is smokes A, rush through the connector, and execute on B. We just read them really well at the beginning and after, we just played default, we knew they were going to play on mid. It was a bit shaky, but in some crucial rounds, when we were losing them, we just saved our weapons and it was easier for us to finish the first half.

And in the second one, after flamie won the forcebuy, everything changed, maybe we destroyed their economy, we felt it was our chance to take this map.

So was flamie's 1v2 the big turning point, the deciding moment?

It was a very important round, I think he changed the game and we felt more confidence after and we just did what we wanted against them.

On Inferno, you again took control at the beginning before NiP started clawing their way back in, so what were the keys to closing that out in the end?

We beat them before in the group stage on Inferno, so we knew how they were going to play again, just after we started to play pretty well, they just changed their style, they started to fight on middle when we tried to take mid control. We just didn't expect this because, before that, they always smoked short, I don't know why, probably to not let us cross to site. At the beginning, they used their nades really fast, but after that, they understood that it was easier to play when you save your nades and play together in the site we were going to.

You've been in godlike form in these past couple of tournaments, especially, but you missed out on the MVP at EPICENTER, what were your thoughts on that?

It was my MVP at EPICENTER, I'm pretty sure, I was just a bit unlucky in the final because we lost it to FaZe. But yeah, after we lost a few tournaments, the Major and ELEAGUE before the Major, I started to practice even harder because I knew my team need me in any round. So I'm just practicing every day and trying to get my form even better.

We've got a few more tournaments until the end of the year, what do you reckon Na`Vi has to achieve by the end of 2018 to make this a great year?

I think we just need to get some more victories in big tournaments, that's it. I'm pretty sure that IEM Chicago and ESL Pro League Finals are going to be the most important tournaments for us, and if we don't have a lot of time to practice for IEM Chicago, ESL in Odense is going to be good for us.