SileNt: "We're already in talks with a few organizations"
Michael "Duck" Moriarty caught up with Samuel "SileNt" Portillo of Swole Patrol to discuss the team's hopes at the Minor, their thoughts on last weekends event, and how they are approaching the MDL training season.
You've come to the Minor as one of the underdogs, what are your expectations and hopes here?
Our expectation at the very least is to get out of groups, obviously the end goal is top two. I think sometimes people see our groups, for example we play NRG first, and they probably cancel us out already. We see this as a good thing, because we only have to play NRG in a BO1. I see our group as being the harder group, so it doesn't really matter who we play.
Like you said you will play NRG first, and you also have NTC and eUnited in there. What sort of preparation and work have you put in to be able to overcome these teams?
Currently we don't put too much into other teams, we are more focused on ourselves. We have a really good map pool, we can mostly play any map. When it comes to playing teams, we'll start watching a few demos here and there, and focus on what maps we would want to play them on. I think NTC vs. eUnited is kind of a toss-up, so we aren't sure who we'll play. Depending on if we win or lose, we'll have a decent amount of time to prepare for the next match.
Fairly recently you made a change to your roster, replacing ryan with LILMAN. What was the thought process of that, and have you seen an improvement since then?
The biggest reason was that he didn't develop as fast as everyone else at the beginning. No one is perfect and we all make mistakes here and there, but he just wasn't developing enough. It brought out a lot of inconsistent gameplay. As soon as we were looking for a new fifth, and I knew he was available, I told my team that they would like him. He has so much upside, he is a player who can play anything. He'll never complain about any role he has, he'll just play it. He adapts very well and he doesn't make many mistakes, and he isn't afraid to make plays. Overall he is just a really competent player.
You're here at the Minor after being eliminated from the ZOTAC Cup Masters by Sharks after two lengthy games. Does that impact your preparation, or are you just focused on the next thing?
Sharks, we feel like we should beat them every time. No disrespect to them, that is just how we see ourselves. One thing about our team is that when we take big losses we actually recover really fast in the sense that we go to our lowest low, but then bounce back. For example in MDL we may lose to a team we should never lose to, and the next week we play a qualifier and make it to the Closed Qualifier beating Rogue or something.
So when we lost to Sharks we accepted the loss, and went back to look at our mistakes. So I think this is another time we'll be able to turn it around.
You're still in MDL after narrowly missing out on promotion to EPL a couple months back. Knowing this is essentially a practice season with no LAN or promotion, how much focus are you putting on the league right now?
We don't really care about the regular season, we just want to make playoffs. We don't really care who we play or where we seed, because at the end of the day we think whoever we wind up playing in playoffs we should be able to beat. The only reason we care about this season is to make money, since we aren't salaried. Besides that we are just really focused on playing qualifiers.
As one of the two teams without an organization currently at this event, do you see this as an event to sell yourselves and show what you can do?
Yeah, that is pretty much how we see it. If we make it top two here, we're already in talks with a few organizations now, so I think if we do that, that is guaranteed stickers already. I feel like a lot of organizations would want us at that point.
After this event you don't have any offline events coming up currently, how much focus are you putting on online qualifiers?
Offline events are pretty important, right? We actually do have an event planned, we plan to go to Fragadelphia 12. I wouldn't say it is the most important LAN in the world, but just building LAN experience with out five is good. It is a pretty big LAN now, I'm pretty sure good teams will go there.
Talking to sponsors in the past, at the end of the day, everyone cares about EPL, and otherwise it is all about open qualifiers and doing well there and eventually making it to big LAN events. Hopefully doing very well at Frag can also help us.
Unfortunately, Swole Patrol have already been eliminated from the Americas Minor after losses to NRG and NTC. They currently sit at 8-3 in MDL, and are currently in position to make the playoffs.
