oSee: "The days have been draining but the work is paying off"

After Liquid trumped MOUZ in 2-0 fashion to secure a spot in the semifinals, the team is buckling up for their rematch against Cloud9. Liquid had to defeat their fellow North American organization in their final group stage match to reach playoffs, and now will need to defeat them once more to take their first grand finals appearance of 2022. Liquid is on something of a hot streak, winning both of their playoff matches against fnatic and MOUZ since conquering C9 in groups, winning all three games in 2-0 fashion.

However, these come off the back of a brutal 2-0 loss to Eternal Fire in the group stage, and with no double elimination pillow to fall back on, Liquid cannot afford any more stumbles as they face Cloud9 once again. Josh "oSee" Ohm has been an integral part of their playoff victories, so after Liquid's triumph over MOUZ, he gave an interview looking ahead to their next match.

Congratulations oSee on making it through to the semifinals, I do want to throw it back to Inferno, cause you guys looked absolutely deadly on that T-side in particular. What was the game plan coming into that particular map?

We knew they liked to play a lot of 3 B starts and a lot of 3 B rotations, so we played based on that information. We knew we had a lot of timings towards A. As soon as we take car, or whatever, they might rotate 3 B. So, we tried to capitalize on that towards A, and then also towards B. We realized that if they aren't fighting for banana too heavily, then we could possibly pop in.

Coming into that second half as well, it looked like MOUZ were trying to make that comeback happen. You yourself were instrumental in terms of closing it out for your team. What happened to you in that particular moment? What were you focusing on, how did you manage to pull those moments off?

Honestly, I knew I was underperforming for this tournament so far, so I was heavily focusing on learning the macro of the game. But recently, I was just focusing on my individual skill, just on my mechanics, and it felt a lot better today. Hopefully, for the next game I'll also be able to perform the same way.

Can you tell me a bit about your own practice regime? We saw a few photos of YEKINDAR who was down here at 9 am getting some practice in. What has it been like for the other individuals on your team, you included, how have you been approaching that practice?

We've been honestly grinding pretty late into the night. We haven't been scrimming too hard, we only play like 3 or 4 scrims a day, doing some theory. But after that, we do a lot of prep, individually, just to make sure we're on par. The days have been draining but the work is paying off.

Coming into the second map, we were kind of expecting MOUZ to go for Mirage, which would have been the decider. Were you kind of surprised when you saw them pick Ancient?

Honestly, yeah. We weren't really expecting Ancient. We feel like it's a really strong map for us. Picking Ancient, starting off T-side, it can be rough, since it's such a heavily CT-sided map. It was definitely a surprise pick, but we knew we were very comfortable on Ancient no matter what team we play, so we came in pretty confident.

Even looking at your results in particular on Ancient, even when you've lost, they've been pretty close losses. Is there anything you've been working on this map in particular and why you're feeling so comfortable as a team in it?

I feel like we're very aggressive, we're very good at being aggressive on CT-side and Ancient is just one of those maps where you can heavily control the B-lane side. You can just push, and of course we have YEKINDAR as well who is our cheetah player, and he does crazy stuff. It's one of those maps that stylistically just fits us, and I myself as an AWPer just enjoy AWPing on that map.

We don't know who your opponent is going to be yet, it will be determined in the next game FaZe versus Cloud9. Who do you think will be taking that one?

I'm going to have to go with FaZe. Cloud9 definitely has the potential to beat them if they're all on point, but I have a feeling FaZe is going to win. I think stylistically it's a pretty good matchup for them.

oSee's feeling ended up proving incorrect as they will face Cloud9 in the semi-finals tomorrow at 09:30AM. Hopefully, he is feeling it in the server as this will be a rematch that Cloud9 surely won't want to lose. If Liquid do surpass Cloud9 to the grand finals, it will be their first finals at an S-tier event since 2020.