dexter: "I stopped respecting the idea that you should respect all these European teams in-game"

We talked to Christopher "⁠dexter⁠" Nong after Grayhound eliminated Liquid in a shock result which saw the Australian side come back from a 2-12 deficit on Mirage.

After first taking down Evil Geniuses in the opening round of the group stage, Grayhound pulled off another huge upset in the lower bracket, where they beat No.1 side Liquid 2-0 with an astonishing comeback from a 2-12 deficit on the CT side of Mirage, which put a stop to the North American team's 15-map winning streak on the map.

We managed to get a hold of the dexter immediately after the shock result to get his impressions of the comeback, to reflect on the team's change from Erdenetsogt "⁠erkaSt⁠" Gantulga to Joshua "⁠INS⁠" Potter after the StarLadder Major, and to discuss the in-game leader's individual improvement as of late.

Starting off with the massive comeback on Mirage against Liquid, to turn it around from 2-12 considering everything might qualify as one of the biggest upsets and comebacks of all time, tell me how you managed to do that.

Yeah, I don't know what happened, really. I came into that match with like two hours of sleep, so I was really slow the whole time, I just felt really bad. Round by round, something happened and we just kept winning rounds and then we were like 15-13 up. Pretty insane, yeah.

To pull off something like this normally takes a lot of mental strength, how did you keep the mood up? Did someone keep the team in high spirits?

Honestly, no, we were just all like... Sico was thinking about going clubbing already, so everyone was just pretty chill, very careless, and it just happened. Everyone was in a relaxed atmosphere after we were 12-3 down, I guess (laughs).

Surely, after that win and especially given your earlier win on it against EG at the start of the tournament, you must have been confident to take on Liquid on Nuke.

Definitely. We knew they haven't played it recently, so I was kind of hoping that if they haven't played it in officials they will be a little bit rusty on it, so that was my hope going into it, and we felt good versus EG.

How do you now feel about your chances to go through to the playoffs after these upsets?

We feel pretty good, everyone is just playing lights out, so we'll see. We're not overconfident, but we feel great.

Going back to the change you underwent after the Major, bringing in INS instead of erkaSt, what led you to picking him up out of the possibilities in your region and how does he fit in erkaSt's positions?

He just allows really good communication for us. No offense to erk, but his communication wasn't his strongest point because, obviously, he's from Mongolia. The communication allows us to be able to rotate a bit more and just move around much more efficiently, basically. He plays pretty much exactly the same positions, so it's very easy to just slot him in. It's all about us talking about the small things that we need to go over with him, the little details of where to position if someone else is positioned here, something we need to just work on for the future.

The departure of NeiL_M at the same time went under the radar a little bit, can you talk to me about that situation and if you're looking for another coach?

I think we just went our separate ways, really, it just happened, can't really say too much on it. Right now, we're definitely looking for a new coach. It needs to fit into our dynamic, that's pretty important.

What would his qualities have to be?

Probably hard-working in terms of looking at the other teams and details of how they play consistently. Also adding new metas in because we're obviously from Australia, so we don't get to practice versus good teams, so looking at what's new, what's the meta right now in Europe, and then talking to us about it, not necessarily to play the meta but to understand it and know how to counter it, basically.

So you're looking more into an in-game coach rather than a hype man like Neil?

Yeah, for me, yeah. I just need a more analytical side of things to see what's going on in Europe, basically.

You've had some improved form over the past few months, especially looking at the Major, what do you attribute that to?

I would just have to say that I got into a zen mode after France, at least. I stopped caring too much and, whatever I do, I do with full confidence. There were many times before where we played a certain team on Nuke, for example, and normally in scrims I would play very aggressively and then in actual matches I would just go into a turtle and give too much space and respect to the other teams. I just stopped respecting the idea that you should respect all these European teams in-game, so I just run at them, ruin their perfect strategy by killing one of them, even if I die it doesn't matter because then they're down one set of utility. That's pretty much my mentality going on in the game right now.