Swisher: "With a solid IGL I'm very confident we can be the best team in NA"
M80 faced a brutal situation the whole RMR, with coach Rory "dephh" Jackson stepping in to fill the IGL position in the team. Unfortunately, the coach, the manager fell just short of clinching the Major, losing out on match point on map two and falling behind on map three. Still, though, M80 performed far above expectations, especially considering the horrid results of other North American squads at the tournament and their wet 'n' wild Wildcard game.
After their elimination, Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore spoke with the team's star rifler, Michael "Swisher" Schmid about the match, the tournament, and the future.
Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.
What do you think went wrong in that series, especially on Inferno
On Inferno, we kinda made the best out of our CT-side. We had a pretty decent CT-side at the end of the day. Losing pistol, the first rounds went back and forth. We knew exactly what they were doing on their first anti-eco that they won against us. reck just got killed halls unfortunately, which made the round fall apart. That round was super close and that early trade of rounds always favors the T-side cause of the economy. That kinda started the CT-side trouble but we came back and finished with a solid 6-6.
We just couldn't get a ton going. Losing pistol is always going to suck and we lost five pistols. It's hard.
Everyone would say this was a very strong run given all the considerations that factored in. With that said, how's the mood in the camp?
We're obviously sad. We're frustrated with how close we were. One round away, 12-10. It's gonna be burned in my memory. But, we're as happy as we can be considering the circumstance we were in. Just two practice weeks with dephh prior to this. To be able to come this close just shows what we are as individuals and as a team. With a solid IGL behind us and avoiding the circumstances that happened this time, I am very confident we could be the best team in NA.
Someone who stood out this event was reck. You've played with him for a really long time, your collaboration even goes back to Monstars. As the older player between the two of you, how are you feeling about his metamorphosis as a player into this star rifler?
His change has been significant. It's awesome to see him improve over these years. Even at the start of this roster, and even with ATK, his inexperience was his biggest hurdle, and that's been slowly getting better and better. Prior to the Wildcard match, the most important thing was getting him talking, to be vocal, because sometimes he can be a quiet player. When he's talking, he's reading the game, he's feeling the game, it makes us all so much better.
When this roster formed, we talked with SykkoNT, and he said that making it to Copenhagen isn't the goal of the roster. It was built more towards the future. With everything in mind, do you think you've built a good foundation to challenge for Shanghai?
100%. The fact that we qualifier for six LANs this year is astronomical considering the view Sykko had. Coming into Counter-Strike, [the goal] was to be in this situation a year, a year and a half into the roster, and we're doing it in six months, which is way ahead of schedule and just shows who we are as individuals and as a team.
