huNter-: "We came back now to the things that were working before"

G2 kicked off their BLAST Premier Spring Finals run with a solid start, besting Russian side Cloud9 2-0 to secure an upper-bracket final match versus Imperial. After a phenomenal T-side comeback on Vertigo, G2 halted Cloud9's attempt at a comeback on the former team's pick, allowing G2 to knock them down to the lower bracket.

Shortly after G2's victory, Nemanja "huNter-" Kovač spoke with Dust2.us' Samuel "Draik04" Popkes regarding the match versus Cloud9, the team's results in IEM Dallas, and his perspective on why the team has had difficulty maintaining their phenomenal form from earlier in the year.

Congratulations on the win, how are you feeling?

I feel good, it's always good to start an event with a win, so yeah, thank you.

You guys played against FaZe and lost on Inferno with a rough T-side. This time your Inferno T-side looked way better. At Dallas, HooXi said there was minimal practice on Inferno. Did you get more practice since then?

No, we didn't practice after we lost in Dallas.I think it was not about the practice, the way we lost against Heroic and FaZe, it was more about... I don't know. We decided at Dallas to not prepare as much as we were doing before and to not know what opponents are doing, instead to only focus on ourselves, but we came back now to the things that we were doing that were working before. I think that's one thing. The second thing I think we were shooting a lot better individually then we were doing at Dallas.

What do you think was going wrong on CT and how did you guys stabilize?

We lost pistol 5v3, and then after we lost first gun round when we had an entry, Ax1Le killed NiKo full-blind, that happens, this is the game. On 10-10 we had a 5v3 and then we lost, so we need to just be more careful when we have advantages to just calm down and just sit tight and just fall back, reorganize, and do something else, not dying immediately when we get an entry. Because we are working to get an entry and then if you are dying after that, sometimes it's unlucky but sometimes we shouldn't do those things. We should just fall back, make some good setups, and worry for the re-aggress, but together as a team. Afterward, we won an eco, after that they maybe won one round or even no rounds. So yeah, winning an eco is always good mentally.

You had a strong start to the year, but it's been rough since then, especially with the showing at the Major. What do you think is the cause for that?

As you said, December, January, and February were really good, we had a lot of streaks, and we won two trophies at that period. Nowadays it's really tough to be consistent because there's a lot of good teams, and no teams are doing really good for one year, for example. Heroic is the most consistent team and they won only one trophy for example last year. It's really tough because there's a lot of good teams, for example, Vitality won the last two events, twelve games in a row, and today they lost against Imperial 2-0.

That's the game, that's CS nowadays; it's really tough to stay consistent, especially if you're winning some big events, for example, like when we won Katowice, it's really tough to focus on events like Pro League. When you play the group stage and then after you need to chill down at home for three or four weeks and then play again. If you are winning and then playing immediately second event, third event, that's really good, but if you have some time to chill, it's tough, because when you're good all the teams are watching you and they always want to copy what you're doing. Sometimes I have a feeling we are playing against ourselves, because when you are the best everyone is watching and looking at you and it's really tough to stay consistent.

I was wondering if the fatigue of going from event to event might be an issue, but you make it seem like it would be more beneficial to have events one after another. Do you think that keeping the momentum would help you more than rest between events?

I mean, it's tough as well to go from event to event mentally, especially sometimes if you are playing bad, but if you're playing good playing two or three events in a row is always good. That's the best way to improve, playing events. Practice of course, you can do some things, but real practices and real improvements are when you play officials, then you rewatch and see what you can do better for the next time. If we step up individually, we will be the G2 that we were at the beginning of the year, this is why we were the best.

You mentioned earlier that Vitality lost to Imperial, so now you're set to face Imperial. Thoughts on that matchup?

Nothing, we just finished our game against Cloud9, we were focused on them, and now in one hour, I will immediately focus on Imperial. I didn't expect them to win, but this is CS, they played some good Counter-Strike against Vitality. Imperial is the next opponent, and we'll just focus from now on them. They have some legends on the team; of course, they didn't play that many officials in Europe, so we don't know still how they play we need to rewatch what they did and prepare for them the best we can.

This win secures a place on stage in front of the crowd. How does it feel to be on stage once again?

I think we are the team that always had good success playing in front of the crowd, except Dallas. We won all the games in front of the crowd except these Dallas games, so it's always good to play, and that's why we are playing this game, because of fans mostly.

Do you think for Dallas it might've been because the crowd was rooting for FaZe?

Nah, we don't care about that. We had a lot of fans there as well, and Americans cheer for everybody. If they're cheering for somebody else they always know how to, for example, if you're doing a good move and killing some people, they always want to cheer for you as well. American crowd is cheering for everyone, so I like that.

huNter- and the rest of G2 will now have some time to prepare ahead of their game versus Imperial, slated to begin at 10:00AM tomorrow.