TACO: "When we're winning everything is fine, but when we start losing it's like a truck is rolling over us"

We chatted with Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo after MIBR's first day in Miami, which included a loss to Natus Vincere and a tie with FaZe.

TACO stopped to chat with HLTV.org in the mixed zone at the BLAST Pro Series, where he went over the keys of the first day of play for his team. With only a tie to their name, MIBR will have to go on to face two of the favorite teams, Liquid and Astralis on day two, as well as Cloud9.

During our conversation, TACO went over the matches of the day against Natus Vincere and FaZe, what worked and what didn't work, the fatigue that comes from playing a lot of events in a row, and his personal outlook on going into the last day of matches at BLAST Pro Series Miami.

You played Na`Vi first, how'd you prepare and did you expect the match to go as it did?

No, it didn't go as expected. We knew what we were doing on the map, but we threw away a lot of rounds on the CT side. As CTs it felt easy, but we just threw away a lot of rounds, a lot of clutches, and as T we played really bad. The game was easy as CT but as T we couldn't do anything.

What was it that didn't work?

I think our gameplan was bad on the T side. We had a gameplan, but I don't think it was really good. We discussed it after the match and it really wasn't good. As CTs, I had a bad CT side... We lost a lot of advantageous situations, 5vs3s, 5vs2s... Maybe we need a bit more experience on the map, we knew Na`Vi likes to play it slow and fake stuff, but it just didn't work out.

You started out pretty well against FaZe, but then they took control and you had to come back at the end...

Yeah, that's a problem we're facing as well. When we're winning everything is fine, but when we start losing it's like a truck is rolling over us. That's something we have to work on for the next matches. Against FaZe, we threw a lot of rounds again, NiKo had some really good clutches, I think we lost two to him, and even though we had a bad CT side we could recover as Ts to get the tie.

You've had some back-to-back events. How is that affecting the team?

We're not tired, the only thing that is affecting us is our preparation. We don't have time to change stuff, which is something we'll improve for next season...

How about when you play, do you feel fatigued?

When we sit down we forget about everything that is happening. I don't feel it, the only problem that I'm feeling is that the preparation is not that good since teams know what we're doing and the style we're playing is not the best one. The strategies we have, we don't have time to change them... so yeah, I don't feel tired, it's just about preparation and changing stuff.

How about tomorrow, do you still think you have something to get out of it?

Yeah, I'm really excited to play even if the results we got today weren't that good, I love to compete and I'm really excited to play in front of the crowd. We have Liquid, Cloud9, and Astralis tomorrow, three great teams, and we'll try to upset some of these teams that are title contenders, so let's see what we can do! We're still alive in this tournament, maybe if we get those last wins we can even make the final.