osorandom: "Being able to make it out of groups would've been huge for us"
With the Group A matches at DreamHack Open Austin coming to a close, Dust2.us' very own Collin "CarbonDogma" Davis caught up with eUnited's coach Jared "osorandom" Hartman to get his thoughts on the team's performance, their qualification for EPL, and their goals for upcoming league matches.
I wanted to start off with the initial match against Fragsters, you guys ended up beating them. What're your thoughts about that game?
It was a really good opening match for us, typically we struggle in Bo1s to start off. We just start really slow, our comms are a little bit off, so being able to grab a win right off the bat was definitely huge. Fragsters are very similar to where we are in rankings, I think they're a little bit ahead of us, so it's a good measure of where we are as a team coming into a Bo1 in a group stage.
Against Heroic, I know that the internet died and there was a big delay. Do you think the delay killed your momemtum?
It killed theirs as much as it killed ours, but at the same time we had a huge round that had a good potential for us winning. Having to replay that round, we ended up losing it, and I think that just carried over into the next half. We had some struggles of trying to get our midrounds on the same page, and that definitely hurt us overall.
And in the decider, on the last map, do you think there was a specific problem on the last one there?
We ended up getting caught on a few of their plays when we had an idea of what they were gonna do. They were just hitting their shots and catching us off on our rotates, and that was the biggest thing — they played us really well, and were able to capitalize off of our mistakes.
You guys finally got into Pro League, so now you're in both of the big leagues. What's that like?
It's pretty amazing, it's nice that we ended up making it into a season where we have a break in between now and before the next EPL, so we have the ability to go over and fix all of the mistakes we were making previously.
That way when we get into Pro League we're able to fire on all cylinders rather than just firing on part of them, or repeating a lot of small mistakes we were before where other Pro League teams would be able to capitalize off of.
What're your goals gonna be for those seasons, cause in ECS you were really close to getting to playoffs?
Yeah, for ECS we ended up flying back as soon as we made EPL, but we flew back to the US to play our matches. We had a high chance of making it because of our losses, but after losing two maps we had no chance of making it.
I think our goal for next season is obviously making it into ECS, which is a lot harder than it is for EPL because it's only four teams [that can qualify] and there's only ten teams in the league. For EPL it's definitely making it into playoffs and getting a foot in the door towards more international competition.
What were your goals for this event?
Our goals for this event was to at least make it out of groups because we did receive an invite based on the fact that another team dropped out. So being able to make it out of groups would've been huge for us, and I think it would've made a good statement.
We were super close and getting caught off a lot in the third map definitely didn't help us.
Rogue is going to be the only NA team in the semifinals, so what do think they're going to be able to do there?
I think with the addition of Rickeh over gMd they definitely have a lot of potential. On their CT sides I think it strengthens them a lot because Rickeh can play as a good rifler or as a secondary AWP.
They were a team on the cusp as well for EPL and ECS, so I think this may help push them, but I do think that the lack of practice with Rickeh overall will make it harder for them to make it through into the finals, depending on who they play.
They should be able to make it into the finals cause they're playing Fragsters, I expect them to be able to not repeat a lot of the same mistakes we did because they do have a lot more experience as a team overall on a LAN environment.
While eUnited have been eliminated from the running, Rogue still carry the mantle for North America in Austin as they're set to take on Fragsters tomorrow. The winner of that matchup will take on Heroic, Space Soldiers, or OpTic in the grand finals later the same day.
