HexT: "From my POV, I feel like we didn’t get into the game all that much"

A disappointing opening loss to fnatic placed EG on the back foot at the beginning of the IEM Katowice Play-In, with a 16-8 scoreline on Inferno not putting much stock into the North American team. Down but not out, EG still have more matches to play, now in a BO3 format.

After the game, Dust2.us' Liam "Slevo" Slevin interviewed HexT to see where the team's heads were at, their game plan going into their game versus fnatic, and the squad's thoughts on their upcoming game.

A disappointing start to IEM Katowice, tell me about that game against fnatic from your perspective.

From my POV, I feel like we didn’t get into the game all that much. They were doing aggressive setups around banana, so we couldn’t take car and go back A and all that shit. Definitely there’s that, but other than that, it’s kinda hard to know what’s going on without rewatching the game.

In terms of the veto, best-of-ones can be up in the air, was Inferno a map you expected to come out of fnatic?

It was one of three maps [we expected], but yeah Inferno was definitely one of them.

You guys came directly from BLAST, tell me what preparation was like going straight from BLAST to Katowice?

We’re still focusing on ourselves since we’re still kind of a new team with wiz coming in. So we’re mostly just focusing on ourselves and not really counter-stratting everything. So for preparation, we’re just focusing on ourselves and hoping we improve.

You mentioned wiz coming into the team, what’s it like working with him in the short time you’ve had together?

It’s been fun! I’ve been friends with wiz for three years now, so bringing him in has a large sense of familiarity, so it’s fun having him on the team. Also, his clutches are insane, it’s crazy.

For yourself, still kind of new with the team, first the Major and BLAST and now Katowice, what’s the nerves like for you? Have they been settling down a bit?

Yeah, but still, the first few rounds of the first game of the tournament, there’s usually a lot more nerves. But it dies down as the game goes on cause I’ve done this, you know, a thousand times, so it’s pretty normal after that.

There’s another addition to your team with Shakezullah coming in as an assistant coach. With a mind like his being one of the best in NA, what’s it been like working with him so far?

He’s had a lot of good input. Playing against him in ECL, you don’t think anyone else is that good, but talking with Shakezullah and seeing how he approaches the game, it’s been helping a lot so far.

At the moment, we don’t know who you guys play next, it’s either Sprout or OG, is there any preference in who you’d like to play against in a best-of-three?

Honestly, I have no idea. I know that at least in scrims, Sprout play really aggro, so I don’t think it would be too hard to anticipate what they’re gonna do. OG though, I think they’re a solid team, so I’d definitely like to play Sprout over them.

You mentioned playing Sprout in scrims. From being in EU, and having some time to scrim against the top teams, who have you learned the most from playing against?

Probably NAVI. It’s self-explanatory, they’re pretty good haha. The way they approach the game is not the same way the average team approaches it. It’s definitely new and it’s interesting to see when we play against them.

This is one of the big events coming into 2023, towards the start of the season, what were some of the expectations you guys set as a team?

Usually, the expectations we set are just “improve” and “play our game”, but then after we’ve settled in, I think that’s where we start setting high expectations for ourselves.

Evil Geniuses will attempt to stave off elimination in their next match, as the squad prepare to face Sprout tomorrow at 01:30PM.