Daps: “We want to play FaZe and get revenge. It’s nice to win a tournament by beating the best team there.”

Ever since Daps and YEKINDAR joined Team Liquid, the fortunes of North America's finest have taken a turn for the better. Top 4 after top 4, and now another finals appearance thanks to a win over OG. The team is now awaiting the winner of FaZe vs G2 in the finals of BLAST Premier World Finals. We talked to Daps to get his thoughts on the win today and the upcoming matchup.

Arnav "xL" Shukla: NaVi picked Overpass into you yesterday, and they got punished for it. And today, you guys picked it into OG yourself. Confidence pick after that win?

Daps: Honestly, Overpass has been a map that, in practice, has been one of our best maps actually. And in matches, we falter like vs Heroic at the major, where we were 11-11 with the full economy, and we lost. So it feels like we've been robbed of a lot of our Overpass wins, even though our record doesn't show it. Even today, there were a lot of situations where they hit good timings, and there are some fortunate situations that went their way. But we're confident in the map.

xL: The attack on Overpass wasn't getting any traction. Even YEKINDAR couldn't find too many openings. The few rounds you won came from NAF or Elige going huge. What went wrong in that half?

Daps: There's a round 2v2 B site where Nexa just walks out from spawn and kills Yekindar. That's pretty unfortunate and random from them. NEOFRAG was having really good timings today early in the half, where we were getting caught off guard. Overall the game plan was pretty good, but we just had a lot of rounds slip away.

xL: The CT side was much better, but they managed to close it out and win the map. How do you analyze the end of the game?

Daps: I don't think there's too much to analyze. We got caught on a B pop that ruined our economy. It's just a situation where we made more mistakes on the CT side of Overpass, even though it was a better half. It was a game that could've gone our way, but we aren't dismissing Overpass because of this loss.

xL: 9-6 half on Inferno, solid performance from Elige. Good CT side overall?

Daps: Yeah, especially since we lost that 3v5 when we had the bomb down at Arch. It could've been 10-5, 11-4 CT side, but even a 9-6 is good on Inferno. We're happy with the half, even though we threw that round.

xL: You close it out on Inferno and tie the series 1-1. Going into Anubis after the FaZe loss, were you feeling confident today?

Daps: The FaZe loss was super good for us. It helped us correct a lot of the mistakes and helped us learn a lot more about the map. Because no one's gonna be perfect on Anubis till it's played a lot. So the FaZe loss gave us a lot of confidence even though they destroyed us.

xL: Tomorrow, you're facing the winner of FaZe G2 tomorrow. How confident are you feeling about the finals?

Daps: We're confident in either matchup. Obviously, FaZe will be the harder matchup, but we also want to play FaZe and get revenge. It's nice to win a tournament by beating the best team there. 

xL: Ever since you and YEKINDAR have come in, you've had a really solid performance. Top 4 at every event except the major, finals at EPL, finals now at a minimum. How would you describe the performance that you guys have had with the team?

Daps: I think it was good because when we first came, Liquid was not practising with Shox at all, and the team was kinda dead. When we came in, we just redid everything from scratch, and I'd say we've achieved and even overachieved our goals for the 2nd half of the year. 2023 Is the year where we're looking to be consistently getting to the finals and not just like the top 4 or quarter-finals.

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