G2 Snax: “It’s been a long time since I have faced Zywoo”

G2 come into BLAST Premier Fall Finals as one of the favorites. They have a new member on the squad, a past legend and Taz's former teammate - Snax. An exciting 2-0 victory over Team Spirit puts them firmly in the top four at Fall Finals. Esports.gg caught up with Snax after their victory to talk about the team's mentality, the series and their next match against Team Vitality.

esports.gg:  Congratulations. I want to ask first about the second map. It was a crazy comeback, crazy energy. How does it feel to pull it back from that far behind and avoid a third map?

Snax: Obviously, I could say it's a relief. We don't need to play a third map. We just play intense on the second map. We started pretty bad on the T-side. Even the first gun round, I called something else, we didn't hear or something. I wanted to go B, then we started around A and then we said we're too late, we just have to start from the start.

Also, I felt like we couldn't find a grip on the T-side. Like on the strat I wanted to play. But it's nice to see that we could come back on the CT side. It was really nice, we had some struggles in this tournament especially on CT. And yeah, it's nice to win 2-0 even after overtime.

esports.gg: I wanted to ask about mentality. What is it like when you are chasing a team rather than having a big lead and looking over your shoulder? Does it feel different trying to catch someone up?

Snax: Not for me. Maybe for other guys. I've played too many now. I'm pretty experienced in this game. Maybe not good shooting but I'm trying to work on it. I think it's both ways the same way. Sometimes, I feel when you are catching up, there's less pressure to close it out.

Nowadays, you feel like the opponent team is more stressed to just close it out, and if they cannot then they are simply more stressed. And I'd rather be on the second part - the other side.

esports.gg: Obviously, Spirit, had a very successful year. They were a big favorite, a lot of people thought they could go all the way in this event. How does it feel to have taken a scalp like that and do you think this announces you guys at that level that can win big tournaments?

Snax: I feel like it depends on the day, to be honest. Sometimes, we're playing really good CS and we can go through like DUPLO back in the days versus opponents. I still would say we're playing really good CS. I still would say we're a new team. For me, three months is not enough to work especially with the amount of travel we have within the team. 

I would put ourselves more as a Dark horse in the tournament. I feel like it's also better because we're not as stressed than in the moment. I feel like obviously, we have the firepower and people can see it's easy on this level to have four guys that are shooting everywhere and killing everybody. But it's not like that in CS, if it was that easy then you could just make five aimsters and play the game and they'd probably win anything. 

So it's just a matter of time, we need to work with the team, we need to do the strats. We need to go with all the protocols from CT to T side, every round during the mid and end rounds as well. It's not an easy job. And especially if you can't, there are six maps to play around and there are other teams, you need to prepare for other teams and on other maps and it's just hard, especially for a team like us. 

I would say, maybe we are playing three months together. I don't know exactly, I don't remember when we started, but let's say two and a half months. So even here, we've had three weeks of practice maximum I think from this period. Now, we came from Pro League directly to BLAST, so we had no practice at all because I don't think we practiced even one day between Pro League and here. So you can imagine, for those two weeks, we had maybe one day or two days of practice. So it's hard. It's not easy but I feel it's like going in the good direction.

esports.gg: I wanted to ask your pick of Mirage. It's a map that we see you guys pick a lot, but also a map that Spirit guys are comfortable on. They seem to enjoy it. What made you choose to still go with that map versus maybe counter-picking against their strength?

Snax: I wanted to be really nice against Spirit because they picked Dust 2 which we also feel comfortable on. So I wanted to pick Mirage so they are also comfortable. So we played on two of our good maps and we enjoyed the game and I think people would enjoy it as well.

esports.gg: Obviously, happy with the outcome right? Tomorrow you head into the match versus Vitality, I just wanted to know what the energy, what's the confidence like. 

Snax: I think it's going to be the first time when we're going to face Vitality in this lineup. I would say, I can't wait for the match. I would like to see how we'll play against Vitality. Obviously, they are a great team - around the Top two or the top one along with NAVI. It's going to be a really tough match for us. I would be happy for us to face them. It's been a long time since I have faced Zywoo as well, so I'm just happy that we can play again. It's the semifinals, and every time are in the playoffs, If it's against Vitality, I want to show the best CS we got.

esports.gg: Congratulations today. Thank you very much for your time. Good Luck tomorrow. 

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