While NUS and NP have already locked their spots in the semi-finals, only two of the four teams in the lower bracket will be joining them at *SCAPE.
While NUS representatives no.men are looking like the heavy favourites, only one team has been able to beat them. SP’s KDE took down the star-studded NUS roster not once, but twice in Group A.
Team captain Akaththiyan “BigBlackCod” Ienin is joining us today to discuss his team’s performance thus far and how they intend to punch their ticket to *SCAPE.
Welcome Akath, could you start off by talking about the team’s experience in Campus Legends so far?
For most of us, this is the first time we are playing in Campus Legends. When we were running through the school qualifiers and playing in groups, we were winning every game without doing that much, so everyone was having fun. The NUS games were way more intense though. When we got 13-0’ed by NUS, we were pretty tilted, and did not know what was going on. But overall, we are spending time getting to know one another since most of us are new to each other.
You mentioned that most of the players are playing with each other for the first time. As team captain, can you share more on how the team functions and the performance of your players?
Our team is unconventional. We do not plan specific strategies for our opponents. It is more like playing ranked. We go into the game, pick our agents, and just play. We come up with everything on the fly. We do watch some of the games to prepare, though mainly the stronger teams like NUS or NP.
As for your performance, we all have our own strengths. In terms of fragging, dzii is always there. Mizern and Spooder are very consistent players. In terms of clutching, JayH. Everyone has contributed to our successes so far.
While you did lose to NUS in Round 2 of playoffs, you were also the only team able to take them down so far. Could you share more on your games against them?
NUS has been performing very well, which is not surprising since they have star players like xhum0n. Both times we beat them, the games were very close.
In the most recent game, I think we made a mistake in terms of map bans. I take responsibility for the loss since I chose Attack every time, but we played on Bind and Split. Before we could get to the other side, the game was already out of hand because their defence was really good. You could see that they were practised against it.
The next time we face them will have to be in the finals. If we get to that stage, I am confident in my players’ abilities. I believe that we are good enough to go toe to toe with NUS.
You mentioned that the loss to NUS was painful for the team. How are you mentally resetting and preparing for your next match against SMU?
The games were a beatdown, so we told each other to ‘go next’. After the series, we did not really talk too much about it. We just knew that it was not our day.
As for SMU, they have obviously done well so far. We are not doing too much prep for the series. We will mainly be freestyling because we are all quite confident in our abilities. Of course, we will still be taking them seriously and not underestimate them.
