Maden: "Our mentality wasn't the greatest at the Major"

ENCE's Montenegrin rifler spoke to HLTV after his team secured a return to the playoffs of IEM Dallas.

ENCE secured a spot in the bracket stage of IEM Dallas after beating FaZe 2-0 in the upper bracket semi-final of Group B, showing a much better face than they had during the BLAST.tv Paris Major Legends stage just two weeks prior, where they were eliminated following losses to Vitality, Into the Breach, and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

The Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer-led squad had been in a good run of form since the Paris Major Europe RMR, their addition of Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz paying off in spades only for them to fall short of the playoffs in France despite a flawless 3-0 run through the Challengers stage.

Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković explained to HLTV that the team's fluctuation in performance at the Major was in part due to their mentality when entering games, with the early match times also having an effect. The 24-year-old also touched on returning to the playoffs of IEM Dallas for the second year in a row, and spoke about recent role changes that have helped him flourish individually on the server.

2-0 over FaZe, back in the playoffs of IEM Dallas. Walk me through that match a bit, it got a little close toward the end of Overpass, but you managed to close it out?

For the first map I think they were maybe getting ready for Nuke before the game started, I think the Anubis pick from us caught them a bit off-guard. I feel like we are feeling pretty confident on the map itself, so we picked it up.

Overpass was their pick, we were dominating on the CT half because obviously, Overpass is the most CT-sided map in the pool right now. We were feeling pretty confident, especially after we won the second the pistol on T side, but they won the force buy and then they were just grinding out rounds. Then at the end it was 14-13 for us, we won the round with Tec-9s and we manged to close it out in the end.

I heard Snappi telling BanKs that you were trying some new stuff out, did you feel this was a safer series to test stuff or what was the reasoning for testing it in this match specifically?

Of course it's not a safer series, it's just... we like to try out the things that are working in practice. We haven't done it in officials yet before this, but in practice we did it a few times and it worked out so we tried to test it out in officials. It's a bit of a YOLO play, a risky play, but FaZe was just ready for it and it didn't work.

IEM Dallas had a bit of a weird place in the calendar considering it's right after the Major, some teams don't necessarily have the same motivation. How are you feeling coming into this event?

Our result at the Major hit us a bit in the face because I think we are a really good team and we are all good individual players, but our mentality wasn't the greatest at the Major, I would say. Especially going into the early games, like when we had early games starting at 10 AM or something, we were not mentally prepared and we were not hyping each other, we were not in the game.

For this tournament we tried to change it as much as possible and just be ready 100% going into every game.

When I was watching you play just now, nobody was yelling super loud or anything, so when you say that you're trying to hype people more what do you mean by that? I didn't see too much of it.

I still think it was much better than at the Major itself. Maybe against FaZe we were focused too much on the game, and especially when you win the first map so cleanly, then it's hard to hype it up if it's not mega close moments, you know?

You're back in the IEM Dallas playoffs, obviously we don't know whether you'll be in the quarter-finals or semi-finals yet. You were there last year, you're there again — is it the same goal, to win it this time?

As I said, I think we have great team chemistry, we are good players, we fixed our map pool pretty good and I feel like yeah, we are one of the contenders to win IEM Dallas. If we're going to be there 100% before every game, I think we have a high chance to make it far, maybe win it also.

Snappi mentioned that they were using you slightly differently now that NertZ is in the team, trying to give you a little bit more freedom. Can you talk about your role a little bit?

At the beginning when NertZ came, he's the type of guy that I am also. A lot of aggressive moves, a lot of space-taking, and a lot of initiative, which is really good. We need a player like this, but because he added a lot of his individual plays and also SunPayus added a lot of plays with the AWP, I was the guy who was more on the other side just waiting for pushes and not doing much.

I feel like it doesn't fit me well, and if I'm not doing any plays on the map I'm just not going to perform well. We had a talk before the Major and we changed a bit, and now I have a little bit more freedom. Now it's a perfect combination.

How do you feel like your voice is on the team now that you have some different pieces?

I must admit that before, with the hades and Spinx lineup, my voice was instantly under Snappi's voice, he and I were combining a lot of things and we were calling a lot in-game together. But now I feel like it's pretty separate, like dycha for example is a guy who is pretty quiet in-game, he is focused on his things and his job, but the four of us — the rest of us — everyone is split equally in the game and we are all having our calls.

Going into your next match, you're going to play against the winner of Astralis vs. Cloud9 for a spot in the semi-final. How do you feel about that matchup?

Both Cloud9 and Astralis are pretty good teams, but I feel like we will just go into the game confident against them. Before the RMR we couldn't beat Cloud9, we beat them at the RMR and it was a relief for us. Getting into this matchup will be much easier now for us.

When you skip the quarter-finals you end up having a day off, do you prefer having a day off between games?

I don't mind too much about this, I think it's fine to instantly play another day.