junior: "I think it’s in everyone’s mind that we can’t find a win"
Following Complexity's loss against Spirit, Dust2.us' Liam "Slevo" Slevin snagged Complexity's AWPer Paytyn "Junior" Johnson for a few comments. The two discussed what went wrong in the match, his thoughts on Spirit's new roster, and Mareks "YEKINDAR" Gaļinskis' stand-in stint with Liquid.
You guys mounted a pretty good comeback towards the end of the game, but it wasn’t meant to be. How are you feeling?
Feeling pretty good, we played a close game despite the 16-11. We had a bad CT-side, we lost a lot of ‘unlosable’ CT rounds that really messed up our CT economy. Other than that, we had a good T-side and if we just got more rounds as CT we could have had a closer game.
It’s no secret that the team has been struggling lately. Do you think that it has just become a mental block at this point?
I think it’s in everyone’s mind that we can’t find a win. We’re trying to do anything we can — we’re changing positions, we’ve made new tactics. We’re all trying to do our job and get a win, but we just can’t seem to break it.
Individually, you had a rough start going 0-7, however you managed to turn it around towards the end and finished 21-16. How important was that for you and your confidence?
A little early on I was still trying to set myself in the server. Once I calmed down and started to hit my shots, I relaxed and the game felt much smoother.
Spirit had magixx and Patsi popping off. How difficult is it to play against a team that have individuals that are hitting their prime against you?
I think that Patsi is a really good, young player. I would say that he is probably Spirit’s best player right now. Losing degster obviously hurt them, but w0nderful is a really good AWPer and he’s only 17 or 18 with plenty of years to develop. They’ll be a really good team with some more practice with w0nderful.
Later on today you have to play against the loser of 00 Nation vs Astralis. Recently, you took a map off of Astralis on Overpass and 00 Nation have made a few changes. How are you feeling going into this BO3?
Against Astralis, we played them at ESL Pro League which was also 2-1 for them, we also could have won all three of those games. Then in Roobet Cup against Astralis, we also had close final two maps there. The Inferno game we just kind of got blown out. It doesn't really matter who we play, we're gonna go in confident that we can beat them.
Obviously, there's one other NA team here, Liquid, who have to decided to utilize YEKINDAR as a stand-in. What are your thoughts on that situation?
I think that team dynamic could be really good, because YEKINDAR and EliGE both entry, and then they have NAF and oSee as the support clutch players, so I hope YEKINDAR can make Liquid great again.
Evil Geniuses recently announced their Blueprint project, signing Party Astronauts and Carpe Diem, two teams you probably know from around the scene. What are your thoughts on that move, and what can those squads bring to Evil Geniuses?
I think it was good that EG signed probably the two best tier two NA teams. They've been practicing unpaid forever, so it's good to see those guys finally make it in the scene, so really cool for EG. Hopefully, they can figure out a good way to go about the fifteen-man roster.
Still on the topic of EG, they've had a bit of drama around the team recently with Stewie2K and maLeK, that whole situation. Do you have any thoughts on that individually?
I'm not gonna go far into detail, but I mean Stewie2K has won a lot. He's the most successful NA player, he jokes about it on the little Reddit post that happened. He jokes about it, but you have to face the fact, Stewie2K is the most successful NA player we've ever seen, you have to straight-up respect what he's done, so that's what I'll say about that.
Complexity are now set to brawl with Astralis in the lower bracket to keep the squad's hopes of reaching the main event alive. The two teams have a little bit of time before their match kicks off, with the elimination series set to begin at 01:45PM.
