“We weren’t able to play at our best”

HLTV had an interview with TACO shortly after SK got their second win at IEM with a rather sloppy way to face EnVyUs and NiP.

With the victory after 2 overtimes with EnVyUs and the comeback after being led by NiP with a score of 11-4, marked SK’s start at IEM Oakland this year. Despite many difficulties, the Brazilian boys still showed their class with 2 victories.

Epitacio “TACO” let us know how they feel heading into this event as well as the last two games. Besides that, TACO also shared about Ricardo “boltz” Prass’ rapid adaptation at SK and the Brazilian boys’ plans for the upcoming ECS ​​and Major when Boltz is not qualified to play for SK.

Let’s start with the comebacks, maybe it was a bit more difficult than you thought against EnVyUs, is that right?

That’s right, we’ve faced EnVyUs a few times on the Cobble map so we know how they’re going to play. SK felt very confident playing against them even though the match was a bit more difficult than expected. During the whole game, the team members were very calm, but in the early stages we didn’t really feel that calm because there was a period of time when SK didn’t play LAN games. about a week or so. In Brazil the whole team played in WESG qualifiers so everyone didn’t have enough time to practice, and even with normal training sessions we didn’t get good results. The whole team was quite cold at the beginning of the match, but gradually the members calmed down as usual and ended the match with a victory.

What about the match against NiP, do you predict that they will explode like the T side? Do you think SK can make a comeback after switching sides?

We chose the CT side first because the team thought that NiP’s T side wasn’t really that good. Everyone knows they’re going to do setups with lots of smoke and lots of other stuff with their plans. Because we wanted to counter damage to their playstyle, we played aggressively to get good results on the CT side first, but that didn’t happen. When we switched to the T side, the members knew that we needed to win the tournament round when the score was 11-4 in favor of NiP. We said to each other “come on guys, we just need to win the green round, T side is always the side we play best”. So we felt very confident even though the score was 4-11 for SK after the first half.

I have a few questions for boltz. For the first event, boltz played with you guys too, but at the moment everyone is playing together a bit more, how’s that going? Of course, he showed himself to be a better fit for the game, letting the big, aggressive players shine more…

The integration of boltz is actually very simple. The whole team knows how he plays and that’s why we chose him to be with us over anyone else. It was really easy even when we didn’t practice with him much. Everyone has only trained for a few days with him so we haven’t been able to play to our best. Like I said, it’s really simple and easy when the team already knows Boltz’s style of play and he is exactly what SK lacks. He gives freedom to fer and cold and even to me. Currently, I can play in many different positions, refreshing a lot of things. When you keep playing with the familiar style, at a familiar bomb site, doing things that everyone knows, you will be caught. At the moment everyone is happy to create new things and play with him. Also, boltz is a good player and he’s playing really well.

Having played with boltz in the past, how do you think boltz has matured in the direction of a player?

I haven’t played with him in quite a few years but I still watch him play and I’m sure Boltz has learned a lot from playing alongside Immortals’ old squad. Boltz is a very different player even now that he still plays passively, which is a huge improvement coming from boltz himself. I think at SK he will learn a lot more, his mindset is also very good. Boltz is starting to listen to everything the team has to say to him and I’m sure he can continue to improve even more.

You guys are back in the rankings, where there have been recent changes with teams like FaZe or Astralis. How do you feel about the competition at the top of the rankings at the moment?

No team really has a solid position at the moment. Astralis also struggled but they are still a very good team, they are always at the top. FaZe has also won a few tournaments recently, but I don’t think they are the best team at the moment. SK is working and trying to stay fit and win tournaments. We have 4 tournaments left and it’s really a highly anticipated competition for all the teams. That’s why SK wants to keep the winning streak. I remember waking up one morning and I saw we were 3rd on the leaderboard. All the members said, “Hey guys, this can’t happen, let’s practice together, we’ll play at our best to regain the world champion position”. It’s not the most important thing, but for me, being at the top is very important, that’s why we’ve worked hard for the past 3 months.

To conclude, one more question regarding boltz and the change of members. He won’t be able to play at the Major and the upcoming ECS, how are you guys prepared for this?

The first thing I want to say, the rules of the tournament are really bad for both the players and the fans. Boltz has only been able to play online qualifiers in the Americas Minor, which is quite unfair and I don’t agree with that. With Major and ECS SK will play the same stand-in. At ECS the whole team will be playing against another player and we will be playing with felps at the Major. With ECS, SK doesn’t have much choice, I know everyone can play with felps, but I’m not sure if felps wants to play in ECS anymore. That means we’ll have to pick a player who doesn’t play the online phase of the tournament.

Source: HLTV