adreN: "It's hard to play our best CS right now"
After Liquid's crushing loss to Vitality, Eric "adreN" Hoag sat down for a brief interview with Dust2.us to discuss the team's issues and what comes next for the beleaguered NA side.
Tough ending to the Major, what are your thoughts coming out of the match against Vitality about the team's performance and what needs to improve?
There's a lot going on within the team right now. Things are obviously not clicking at the right moment. We're struggling with a bunch of different things that I don't want to dive too deep into, but it's hard to play our best CS right now. Back to the drawing board here.
Are you looking at changing positions or is the communication an issue? Do you think these are problems that are able to be solved within the team as you get more experience?
Yeah I think so. There are definitely some communication issues which plays such a big part in CS. We need to make sure we have enough energy, enough comms to be coordinating things. That's all Counter-Strike is. You can have the best strats but if you're pulling them in at the right time or fixing those tiny details where communication is needed, it can be tough. I think communication is something we'll have to take a look at and make sure we are bringing each other up when we're down in hard moments.
When we first talked, you said the goal was to make playoffs, with Liquid falling short there. Looking forward, IEM Dallas is coming up and then we have the player break. Is the team going to use that time and dig deep and come up with some more experimental solutions to the team's problems?
That's in the future, I haven't even thought about the player break. Right now we're going to take a bit of a break because I think the guys are a little bit burned out so we're going to take a couple days off and then go back to the drawing board before Dallas because we want to have a good showing there as it's the only NA event for the year. Gonna take a break and come in with some good energy for Dallas, that's the main thing.
Do you think being on the road for as long as you have and traveling so much has contributed to an underperformance here?
I don't want to use it as an excuse at all but yeah these last couple days have been tough for us. I think the guys are pretty burnt out, that's what I've been talking about with the energy and the communication, if we aren't starting out a match well it's hard to get the guys fully in it and that's been tough for us these last couple days.
After a few days rest, Liquid will head back stateside to prepare for IEM Dallas, which is set to begin on May 30th.
