B1ad3: "s1mple was the defining factor on Mirage, absolutely"

NAVI are growing their confidence as they look to put together a championship run from the lower bracket after a big win over G2.

Natus Vincere have pushed their struggles aside to force their way past G2 in the BLAST Premier World Final lower bracket. The CIS squad did so resoundingly on Mirage, where Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev put up an incredible performance in the decider map, averaging a 2.21 rating, after two very close maps on Nuke and Inferno that went the distance — the latter even being decided after two rounds of overtime.

Following the conclusion of the series Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy took some time to chat about the elimination match against G2, drawing similarities to Natus Vincere's championship run at their first event of the year, BLAST Premier Global Final 2020. The Ukrainian coach also talked through NAVI's current state and the need for the team to score confident victories that can act as fuel if they want to raise a trophy come Sunday.

You had a bit of a rough start at the BLAST World Final despite having been an imposing team for months. You just knocked out G2, another big contender at this event, how do you feel now after getting such an important win?

Actually, you know, we started the year at this same event. It was the BLAST Global Final, we played it in January, and we're finishing the year with the same event. It's kind of interesting. If you look at the bracket, it's actually pretty similar. We lost to Liquid, then we won against a team with a stand-in, Complexity. This time it was Heroic.

Then we played G2, and if we continue the same way we'll play against Liquid, then Vitality, and then a team with a red star in the final. Last time it was Astralis and now it's Gambit. Does Vitality have a chance tomorrow? I don't know, but it looks like it can be really scary for them because there's some mystery.

We gain confidence with every match at an event. Of course it's important for us to win against G2 since we haven't lost to them on LAN in one or two years, even not on LAN, so if we lost it would mean that something changed for us. Maybe we started to play bad, or they started to play better, and it would mean that we need to change something or analyze what's happening. Now we won and we know that Inferno isn't so good, so we'll be working on it tonight.

The two first maps of the series were very tight, with Nuke going all the way and Inferno ending in overtime. What was the little extra you found that got you guys going? Was it s1mple dominating in the first half?

That little extra was s1mple. In the middle of Inferno he started to get important kills and he was getting more of the winning vibe. He started off really confident on Mirage and when you start on a team with s1mple when he's killing like this it's really easy to close out rounds. He was the defining factor on Mirage, absolutely. We got so many CT rounds and so much economy, it just snowballed the team.

Overall we didn't try to find something, we knew that our Inferno was better against Liquid, we saw that it was bad against G2, realistically. We made too many mistakes and we're still playing really bad on Banana. We just refocused, said it's OK that we're losing our mediocre map, but the next map will be one of our best maps. It's more about getting that mindset before Mirage because Inferno can get in your head.

It seemed that you weren't so confident in yourselves at this event early on. Are you starting to feel like the NAVI that's the favorite, the team that can go all the way?

I don't know, maybe not yet. I still see a lot of mistakes, a really awful approach and reactions, mid-calls, a lot of stuff... I mean on Inferno. So it's not like the team that I saw at BLAST Fall Final or the Major. Our energy and our fuel is running out because we got it before the Major with our bootcamp and our psychologist. We did all of the proper stuff, we refreshed everything, and now the fuel is running out. I think we're still looking for our prime game at this event and the only thing that will help us are wins, confident wins.

Do you think there's enough fuel in the tank to make it to Sunday?

I hope so because we actually won the BLAST Global Final from the loser bracket and I think it's possible. It's not like we're out of physical energy, it's more about mental stuff, but if you win you gain confidence, you get some reserves from inside and of course that would help us play the grand final. But we have to think step by step because Liquid, if they win, we'll play against them. We can't underestimate them, we have to respect them.