T.c: "If there is potential to make changes to better the team, they'll probably happen"

Complexity, a last-minute replacement team at the BLAST Premier Spring Finals for Ukrainian side NAVI, have come out ahead in their lower-bracket final match versus Astralis, with a tight 2-1 victory securing them a spot in the quarterfinals versus Imperial. The win over the Danish squad marks a significant rebound considering the fact that the team was demolished by Heroic the day before. With this victory, Complexity are now only a single win away from securing an appearance in front of the home crowd.

Following the win over Astralis, Complexity's coach, Tiaan "T.c" Coertzen, spoke with Dust2.us' Samuel "Draik04" Popkes regarding the intricacies of the match against Astralis, the struggle for the team in closing out matches, and the potential for a shakeup for the team's roster.

First of all, congratulations on the win, a super close series. How are you feeling?

I'm feeling elated man. We obviously got the opportunity to come here last minute, and we just wanted to at least do some damage here, just to prove that we did deserve this spot, because a lot of people were doubting that, even though we were the team that got knocked out by NAVI in the group stage. It's great for us to come here and actually win some games so that we can prove that we deserve the spot.

I wanted to ask about the expectations for this event, with a last-minute invite and a stand-in, albeit one you used at Dallas. What did you think you guys were going to be capable of doing here? Making it to the stage?

We really wanted to make it to the stage. Obviously, even though we're playing with a stand-in we still have high expectations from ourselves. We definitely wanted to make it to the stage at least, it was one of the goals that we set for ourselves. After yesterday we had a really poor showing, we had a big team chat and just spoke about everything that we could do better, so I'm glad that we could step up and show a much better face today.

I'm curious if you were maybe daunted by the Astralis matchup, considering their recent performance at Dallas. Was that a concern for you guys?

Not really. We've kinda played Astralis a lot during our Complexity era; it feels like every Pro League we get them in our group, and then even at some of the other IEM tournaments we always get them. We've played them a lot, I think we're pretty used to playing them. Even though they've been playing well, playing well online, playing well at Dallas, everyone here is a top team, right? So it doesn't really matter who you play, you're going up against a tough opponent at the end of the day.

Talking a bit about the game, some people may have been interested in the Vertigo pick, a map that you haven't played much of recently. What was the thought process in the pick? Obviously, it did work out in the end.

Basically, we don't have a lot of practice with Sonic. I spoke to JT last night, and I was like, "Well we can pick Inferno, but that's still a pretty good map for Astralis, why don't we just go with a Vertigo pick?". We have equal practice on all of the maps, we might as well go for a pick to kinda throw them off a little bit. So yeah, like you said it did kinda work out in the end.

In the other two maps, you had fairly substantial leads that were whittled away, eventually closing it out in the third. Choking these leads is a pervasive problem for you guys; what allowed you to pull through here and how are you looking to resolve this in the future?

A big problem that we have sometimes when we get these leads, is we kinda stop playing our game and start playing their game. We go for less of our normal aggro plays, looking for info, and following our protocols; we kinda stop following our protocols. That kinda creeps in, and teams are able to take advantage of it a lot of the time because we're not doing the fundamentals correctly. On the third map, I just paused and said, "Guys we've got to keep playing our normal style", so Sonic kept going for the aggro deagle peeks, the aggro AWP peeks, he just kept doing his thing. That obviously worked out for us, because we kept playing our style.

I think a big problem as well for us is just in terms of depth, because a lot of the time, in-between events, we struggle to practice in America, especially with hallzerk in Norway, now even using a stand-in. I feel like sometimes we lack depth to close out a lot of these series. Other teams are adapting to what we're doing, and it's like we sometimes just don't have an answer for what they're doing because we just lack that depth. Every time you take a two-week break or whatever, or you have two weeks where you can't practice because people are resolving visa issues and doing things like this, we come back to practice and we kinda have to restart everything. Instead of growing or building on what we have, we have to relearn the protocols and go through our strats again, and just build up our stratbook so we can actually play the event.

If we can just get a little bit more consistency in terms of practice... more consistency I would say is also going to help us, but as you mentioned we do have that hurdle that we still need to overcome, and I think that comes with experience. It's also on the individuals and the organization for us to push that and to help these guys grow as individuals so we build up that experience and that right mindset so we can close out these games.

This reminds me of when I spoke to Grim on media day; he mentioned that, because of the toll of frequent traveling, he wants to stay in Europe a lot more. Do you think an organizational push to have the team stay in Europe more frequently might help to alleviate those depth issues?

I think it's hard as an NA team to keep the balance, because obviously the bootcamps can be quite long and daunting if you're just consistently in Europe, away from your family and friends, and you're just playing CS day-in and day-out and you just have no off-time. While we do need more time in Europe, I think it's more about consistency in the practice. Like I mentioned, we would have a week of practice or two weeks of bootcamp in Europe, but four or five days are being used to resolve visa issues. So how much practice do you really get at the end of the day? Then you have a two-week break after that where the guys are in America, and now we head back to Europe and everyone's forgotten everything we learned at the bootcamp. I think it's not necessarily about being in Europe more, but being in Europe at the right times, and just being able to use our time as efficiently as possible, where we don't have these visa issues hindering us.

As far as the first half of the season goes, you had a solid start at Katowice, but your form has since declined. Would you attribute that to the lack of depth or other factors?

We've had an up-and-down season. I think definitely the lack of depth, you could see at Katowice we had the same amount of practice as everyone else, but then after Katowice, we came back to America, while everyone gets to stay in Europe, right? They keep practicing and adding to what they have, and then by the time we got to Pro League it felt like we were completely out of our depth. It is kinda [lack of depth], but I think it's more than just that. We have a lot of things to learn, even just in terms of mindset, mentality-wise, I think we have a lot of room to grow in those areas. We can just be better in a lot of different aspects.

With the player break inbound, obviously, a lot of teams are looking to make changes. Can we expect Complexity to be considering making changes to the lineup?

For now, we're just looking to close out the season as well as we possibly can, and then we'll have to assess what's happening during the player break. Like you said, a lot of teams are making changes, there's a lot of crazy shuffles happening, especially with Counter-Strike 2 coming out, so we'll just have to see what happens. You never know. If there is potential to make changes to better the team at the end of the day, then they'll probably happen. At the end of the day we want to be winning championships as well, so we don't want to just be hovering around this tier one level where we're competing at these events but are never actually making playoffs or winning the events. If we can make changes to the squad to actually improve us, we'll have to consider them.