EliGE: "I think oSee is going to be the best North American AWPer we've ever seen"

We caught up with the North American rifler after Liquid's first day of play in Romania to hear about his team's progress in and out of the RMR.

Liquid kicked off their Americas RMR run with an unexpected 8-16 defeat on Dust2 at the hands of Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David's 00NATION that put the North American squad out of contention for the sole Legends spot up for grabs, and is now contested among the 2-0 teams: FURIA, Complexity, Imperial and MIBR.

Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski and company then bounced back against TeamOne in their second best-of-one of the opening match day at the tournament in Bucharest, advancing to the 1-1 pool with an overwhelming 16-3 scoreline on Inferno that saw both EliGE and Josh "⁠oSee⁠" Ohm post 2+ ratings.

The 24-year-old talked about several subjects concerning Liquid, including the team's opening blunder to 00NATION and the ensuing victory over TeamOne, their busy schedule and possible form heading into the Major, as well as Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon's influence on the team and oSee's developing potential, which he thinks could end up in the AWPer becoming the best ever in his region.

You were the highest-rated team here along with FURIA, the story lines all pointed to you and them fighting for the Legends spot. Were there any psychological ramifications in regards to that, seeing how the first match against 00Nation went?

I don't think it had any effect on us, we came into this preparing like we would any other match. We did the prep for 00Nation, but the thing that kind of sucked against them is that we chose to be 'Team B.' so we decided to choose map side and we prepared for Overpass and Ancient, but it went to Dust2.

We were OK leaving it in, obviously, since we can ban three maps and we thought we'd be more comfortable on the CT side, but when we started the game off we were just really, really flat. We kind of knew what we should be doing, but we didn't have the best Dust2 that we've played, so it was maybe a bit of a veto error. I don't think we would have lost if it went to Inferno, instead. Unlucky, but it is what it is. I don't think we came into the RMR doing anything different than we were last time.

So the veto caught you off guard? Or what was it that caught you off guard once you were in the map that allowed them to get ahead 11-0?

The veto caught us a bit off guard, but we came off a bit flat. I don't think we were in a bad mindset or anything like that, we were just letting them do whatever they wanted to during the whole map instead of disrupting them enough. We lost to some pops on both sides of the map and I don't think we adjusted well enough, fast enough, during the game to be able to counter that. It's just a combination of not having a good Dust2 — we came into the match a bit flat and got caught off guard.

What do you mean when you say flat?

I guess I would say the communication being a bit flat, and the flow of ideas and being able to pick up on those ideas quick enough.

I spoke to coldzera and he said you guys appeared a bit tired after flying from Pro League and playing more while they had time to prepare. Do you think that played into this at all?

I think it definitely did. It's part of what I said before about us feeling flat. It's the three things I said before and also the travel fatigue. It is very difficult, usually around the three to four week mark is when people start getting fatigued from being away for so long and competing this whole entire time. It really is kind of mentally taxing to be 100% ready for every single tournament back-to-back and it definitely is a factor. But we can definitely show better than that and we should have won that match if we would have played our game.

Looking ahead, it's far out and you may not have thought about it, but we're in the waiting room of the Major and now you have to fly back to North America and then back to Europe for the Major. Do you think you'll be able to get there in a moment of peak performance?

We have thought about it and we were talking about it. It really sucks, there's not really that much downtime whatsoever, we're pretty much going to have to go home and shox is going to actually be on the road the whole time. He has to come to North America for the IEM Dallas qualifier, the BLAST Showdown, and then as soon as that's done we're going straight into a bootcamp for the Major because we just have like seven or eight days leading up to the Major since we lost our chance at making Legends, which sucks because that would have helped a lot for our travel schedule.

Delving back into your first day here in Bucharest, you bounced back well against TeamOne. How did you rally to win your second game convincingly?

It was a really frustrating loss for everyone, nobody is going to be happy with that. Everyone is going to be mad, sad, frustrated, every negative emotion pretty much. So after that we had a couple of hours waiting for our match-ups and we ended up being the third round. Nick [nitr0] and I went to the gym, other people did whatever they wanted to recoup and get back into it mentally and before the match we took some time to talk about what went wrong, what we want to avoid, how we want to fix it.

We didn't really go into the nitty gritty of specifics and details of the match because it's more about the mentality and how we want to approach the game instead. We had a similar talk after Katowice and it helped us a lot, just getting into how we want to approach the game, how we want to play the rounds out, what we want our solutions to be, and that's what has helped us the most — also mentally.

We saw some glimpses at Pro League of what you're capable of, but you're not quite there, either. What's going on in the team, what are you working through and figuring out?

We have gotten to a pretty good level for how long we've been a team and I think that in the last two months we've made great strides until after Katowice about how we want to play as a team and react to different situations. Most teams have their own style, so we were figuring out what our style is and how we want to approach the game to get on the same page collectively. I think that shox helped us a lot during that period of time in NA to help us all get on the same level, but in terms of our downfalls right now I do think we're pretty close.

We obviously had a very sucky loss today, and I still think it'll take us two to three months, maybe four, I don't know, but I think we're close. It's just the inexperience and the pressure in some of these games, we need need to find our footing in the pressured games. We've talked about a lot of things and how we want to react to them, but we haven't had enough reps.

When there's a lot of pressure in a game, fundamentals are what show and at the end of the day — whatever you've practiced the most, whatever you're most used to — we just haven't had enough reps on a lot of these answers that we have so there are natural mistakes that happen. I do think they'll get cleared up the longer we play together, but I do think that we have been playing overall pretty well and it's just a matter of time.

One of the newer pieces in the puzzle is oSee, who has a lot of fanfare in North America. What do you see in him and what do you think his progression is, how far can he go?

I do see him progressing really fast since he joined the team, he's an extremely hard worker, he communicates well, and he has a really methodical approach to the way he wants to approach different rounds and situations. I kind of compare him to device regarding how he wants to play the game, the play style he wants.

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I think he's going to be the best North American AWPer we've ever seen, it's just a matter of time for him to get used to it, get comfortable and have the fundamentals down pat so he doesn't even have to think about it and can just go on to the next one. I see that happening pretty quickly, within like six months I expect him to be a top tier AWPer just because of how hard of a worker he is. He's going to do really great.

Tying in what you were talking about fundamentals and getting more reps, how has your T-side evolved with shox and the knowledge he brings to the team. How has he merged with the previous knowledge in the team?

He has done a really good job at getting us all on the same page as I was saying before, so we've been able to identify how we want to play certain rounds. So if we're playing against an AWPer, when the AWPer dies, exactly what our reactions are going to be. We've taken things from Vitality and what they thought was good, we've identified some stuff from the CIS teams and we're kind of understanding how they play in the rounds, their slow creep style.

We're taking the best of both worlds, what we're seeing and how we're able to apply it, I think it has been pretty good so far. He has helped me a lot to simplify the game because last year I was overthinking a little bit too much as the game advanced more and he's been able to simplify it more in my head — identifying simple solutions and making them clearer, which has been giving me a lot more confidence.

Just to round the interview out, you're in the 1-1 pool now after the first day. What are the general thoughts ahead of your upcoming match?

This match [against TeamOne] has definitely helped a lot. Not even just because of the scoreline or anything like that, but just our talk from before and the way that we were feeling in the game. It felt like we were back on track and playing the we we should be, the way we know we can be playing compared to the first game. We're very confident, there's not really as much pressure anymore since we lost the chance for the Legends spot.

The whole goal right now is just to qualify and we're all very confident that we can qualify. We know how good we can play, how good we are, and I expect to see us close it out 3-1. The pressure is alleviated, now we just have to play our game.