SEMPHIS: "We put all our eggs into the Major basket"

Nouns have unfortunately exited the PGL Copenhagen Major Americas RMR earlier than they would like, eliminated 0-2 after losses to FURIA and Legacy. After strong domestic finishes and a refresh of firepower, Nouns were looking to go deep in the RMR, but have come short.

After Nouns' elimination, Dust2.us' Daniel "Scoobster" Khurgin spoke with the squad's coach, Kory "SEMPHIS" Friesen to learn about what went wrong, the team's coaching situation, and what comes next.

Please note that the full interview can be found below on YouTube or linked here, while the transcript has some key snippets from their conversation.

You had your BO1 yesterday and your BO3 decider today on Inferno where you could only muster 2 T-side rounds each. What went wrong there?

Both teams played well, obviously. Not trying to take anything away from them. The FURIA game, we had a few technical issues at the start which didn't help get that confidence up. It's not necessarily the reason we lost, but it's always nice to not start a game with some issues. But we should have got more than two rounds, even with those issues at the start.

As sad as it sounds, I do think if could just get four rounds, even three, to get a little bit of a buffer, we could maybe get to OT or clinch some of those CT-sides. We're actually pretty confident in our CT-sides. In both games, you could tell we were pretty good on CT-side. I think T-side, what mainly went wrong, is we are having issues with fundamentals like Banana and Bracket control. It might sound sad, cause as professionals, those are the things we should be doing correctly, but for some reason, things just keep going wrong when we do it. We reviewed a lot last night, it's not like we lost to FURIA and just went to sleep. We reviewed the games, listened to the comms back, tried to come back with a new plan, but we just fell into the same trap. We'll have to go and fix that moving forward as it was just embarrassing the way we lost those games.

You guys recently added on adreN as a co-coach, what has he brought to the team?

I think adreN is really good at tweaking things they're doing wrong mid-game. I think my strength is bring full strategies or pistol rounds. I like to create a gameplan, but in their defense and everything, I was feeling really sick when I was in the UK, and that was the majority of our bootcamp. I feel like I let them down a bit in that aspect. Normally I would have brought more, but when you're sick and you aren't feeling good its really hard to be productive. I was having a really hard time concentrating.

This is actually the first event where I figured out my issue. If anyone didn't know, I had Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome, which is not really known. So, if you smoke a lot of weed, google it and be careful, cause it's really not fun. When you're detoxing from it, you can't concentrate or anything like that. Essentially I feel like I let them down a little bit, but at the same time, adreN was there with them and he was helping a lot. I do think he's really good at "in that situation, do this, here, do that faster", pinpointing the intricacies of the round, not necessarily bringing an entire strat to the team. I think he's helped a lot.

On adreN, you both have the same title of co-coach. There's no main coach/assistant coach dynamic to speak of. Are there any issues with that combined role?

It's still fairly new. It hasn't been solidified completely, and like I said, in the UK, I wasn't feeling that great, and that's where most of our progress was made. I think we don't overstep each other. It's a mutual respect thing. If I say something he might agree, if he says something, I might agree. I think when we go over review, he'll be the one skimming through the rounds. He writes a lot of notes. We have pros and cons to both of us. We fit well.

It's still very new. Maybe in six months it'll be different. He's only actually been a temporary sign. Maybe things don't work out, I don't know. We kinda put all our eggs into the Major basket. We didn't think past this, if that makes sense. There's nothing against anything, there's no negatives. We went into it with junior, jeorge, we got adreN. While we were at home I was bringing strats and pistols, trying to help the map with tactics. Carson is kinda a new IGL, adreN is helping, everyone is helping in their different ways. We didn't really split duties up or anything like that.