sAw: "It's super impressive how NertZ has been able to adapt"

The Finnish coach is proud of his team after they turned a 0-2 start at the RMR into a 3-2 qualification over Cloud9 in the last round of play.

ENCE's prospects at the BLAST.tv Paris Major Europe RMR B grew slim after the first day of play, when two best-of-one victories put the international squad up against the wall. Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha's men didn't fret, however, and turned it around by the last round of play. The cherry on top? A victory against top five side Cloud9 in the decider.

ENCE's 'big boss' took some time after the electrifying victory over Cloud9 to share his thoughts on the uphill battle of fighting back from an 0-2 and gave some insight into the balance that needs to be struck at such a demanding qualifier as the RMR. The skipper also gave his thoughts on Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz's adaptation and the current form his team is in as the Paris Major approaches.

Tell me about your run here. You went 0-2 on the first day, you had your back up against the wall, and then qualified against Cloud9 going 3-2. Crazy run, what do you have to say about it?

Yeah, it was a crazy run. We started off with the best-of-ones and the first day was rough. Maybe we started a bit sleepy and it cost us. They played great, but we just weren't our normal selves. It was a hard day for us, but after that we knew that we would have good chances in the best-of-threes, we would get to show our map pool a bit. And basically, best-of-threes allow a few more mistakes, so it's not as risky.

This is a mental game over all. We have all of these best-of-threes one day at a time and we don't know the opponents, so the preparation will be taking time and we'll be stressed with time a lot and there's a lot of pressure. But we showed that we can handle it pretty well, we felt it, now it's just a relieved feeling. Super happy and super proud of the team.

You say it's very much a mental game because of the system that's in place here, and also starting 0-2. Being able to delete that first day, those best-of-ones, and refocusing on the best-of-threes. How did you do that, erase what happened and focus on the series play?

In a way, how we handled it, was that we tried to say 'Okay, it's best-of-ones, anything can happen.' When we came here we knew it was going to be a tough group, so every match we need to fight our hardest. We also knew the mistakes we made in the matches, we knew we weren't at 100 percent, so we talked about it and said 'Okay, the next day we're going to show up 100 percent from the start, we're going to prepare the matches really well, everyone is going to do everything within their power, we're going to work it one match at a time and not think about the outcome too much.' So just trying to release the pressure by working on what's happening right now instead of focusing on the future too much.

One of the things you mentioned is not knowing about your future enemies, you kind of learn late and don't have that much time to prepare. How has that affected you as a coach, have you had to pull some all-nighters? Did you struggle with getting everything ready in time for matches?

It is hard with this schedule because we were also playing the second matches of the day, mostly, but we had to wait for the last matches to finish to know who we were going to play, and then we started preparation. Obviously, with the rolling schedule, you need to be at the studio pretty early, so you also want to prioritize sleep.

You need to balance everything out: How much you want to prepare, how much you want to actually play the game to actually stay warmed up, how much you want to sleep — all of it needs to be balanced. It was hard, I'm glad we have a good analyst to help me, so we were able to get help from him and then prepare. I think we found a good balance overall. The guys are a bit relieved now that the work is done, in a way, because it was a lot of hard work.

You brought in this NertZ guy. I know you had him scouted out last year and there were some possibilities to bring him on then. It didn't work out, but you brought him in now. Did you expect this from him or is he exceeding expectations?

In a way he is exceeding expectations because I didn't expect it to happen so fast, at least. I knew his mechanical skill would be insane just by watching him. Then we did an interview with him, so we had an idea about how he is as a person and how he would fit the team. He has done it super fast, fitting into the team and finding his roles. Some of it he needed to change from Endpoint, it wasn't all one-to-one, so it's super impressive how he has been able to adapt and how he is showing his level. You could see the skill when watching him before, so in a way it was expected, but not so fast.

Striker made a joke today, wondering at what point you're going to have to tell him to calm down so one of the big orgs doesn't come in and snatch him.

[laughs] I guess the hope is that we'll do so good that he doesn't want to leave, right? But of course that's always a thing, people will be interested and people will be checking him out more when they see him posting all of these good numbers and getting great kills. People might focus more on how to counter him, and that's another thing we may need to handle in the future.

You did it, 3-2, so heading into the Major... How are you feeling as a team? When you go into the Major that's when every team wants to be peaking. Do you think you'll be able to hit a good stride going into it?

Yeah, I feel like it, especially since when we made the change with NertZ we had a honeymoon period with him. We're slowly getting over it, so it's not the honeymoon so much anymore, it's more that we get to know ourselves, NertZ, and how we're functioning as a team. There are still a lot of things we need to iron out, we have a pretty good idea of what we need to fix and what we need to be even better, and now we'll have some time to prepare for the Major, so I feel like we'll be in good shape.