RUSH on Nouns' trajectory: "I think this squad has tier one potential"

Dust2.us' own Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore caught up with Will "RUSH" Wierzba following his match against Akimbo at Fragicago 2024, where he is playing with Nouns as one of the favorites at the LAN.

The two spoke about being at a smaller LAN again, RUSH's take on Carson "nosraC" O'Reilly as an IGL, and his journey through the tier two NA scene in CS2, among other topics. For our continued coverage of Fragicago you can find the link to our event live blog below the embedded interview.

I'm here with RUSH coming off of their win against Akimbo a couple minutes ago. It's very rare we see a major winner at one of these smaller local Fragadelphia events, how does it feel to be back playing a local LAN like this considering it's probably going on ten years since you played a LAN of this scale?

The last I think was Fragadelphia 17, I played that with EG Black but that I guess wasn't more local because there were some European teams like Apeks [there], but yeah the last one other than that would have been maybe SoCal Revival LAN which was 2014 and I played with nitr0 back then we were like two 19-year-old 20-year-olds.

I don't mind it honestly cuz everyone's pretty chill and I feel like normally you think maybe you get swamped or people ask for pictures but they're really chill and they're here to play so that's what they're focused on.

But I don't mind being here as well because even though the price pool is lower it's good for experience [for] the team and good for not our our Valve points, [but] in general the ranking points like any amount of price pull you win in any tournament is important so that's the main reason we're here.

With that said, what have you thought about the level of competition? Of course you've played many of these teams before in [ESEA] Challenger League but you've had a chance to play some more [ESEA] Advanced teams that you might not normally square off against. So what's been your impression of the competition here?

It's pretty much expected, they give us a little bit of trouble but at the end of the day we should always win most of these matches. There's a few competitive teams here like what's ogwizard's team? LAG? They've gotten us close in scrims, maybe they've won scrims before, I don't remember really. Probably.

But they're a good team and obviously Elevate, I guess they're timbermen now, they're probably going to be the hardest team here. There's some other pugs with cxzi and stuff but that's different. So overall I think we should be favorites and if we don't win pretty much anything else less than that is probably a disappointment to us.

So you recently came into this team about four months ago, since then you've been working under nosraC. As someone who you're now serving under and used to play against, what do you think of him as an IGL and how has he developed?

I mean I don't really remember much playing against him because like you said he wasn't calling so since I've joined he has just been fine. I mean honestly I feel like he knows what he wants most rounds and I think the only struggles we have maybe are mid-round sometimes but that shouldn't always be him that gives a mid round call.

This should be input given from everybody across the map because he can't see everything, especially on T-side I mean even though he might be in the pack the edge players should give a lot of information which we try to do. But overall I think he's only gotten better since I've joined.

This will be the last LAN they play before they go to Shanghai for the Major RMRs. With you now in the lineup what [are] the priorities for this team to ensure that when they go to Shanghai they're there to make it to the Major?

I think the biggest thing we're going to focus on is a bootcamp in Europe. I think they've bootcamped there before, before I joined, but it's been a while. I think going there for seven days, one to two weeks basically, would be really important for the growth because to have some good practice.

If Complexity's back home playing or M80 is there [practice is decent], but other than that it's Legacy, but when they're all traveling for events there's practice but [we] usually play the same teams and it gets into a weird state where you play the same team over and over on the same map and then it's almost like you're countering each other in the scrims which is not really conducive for growing and trying things out.

So yeah, a European boot camp basically is the summary. That is going to be the biggest thing and trying to glean as much as we can and grow as much as we can in that small time frame before the RMR.

Looking at the NA scene, some of the teams you'll have to face off against at that RMR are squads like Complexity and Wildcard. With many of the squads around NA improving at a rapid rate, do you feel like Nouns is doing a good job keeping pace?

Yeah I would say Complexity is above us for sure. I don't even want to talk about Liquid because we have never played them but I'm sure they're definitely above us right now. I think Wildcard beat us in the EPL qualifiers but that was with the different players before they got phzy and susp.

But we played them in ECL and it was pretty close and in the scrims we played against them it's pretty back and forth honestly. Same thing for M80 every time we play them it's fairly close. So I would say maybe a little bit below them still but not as far as maybe people think. I think I thought they [M80] were going to be a lot worse honestly when they lost Malbs, but Lake seems to have integrated really well and I think that he's a really good player that is going to grow with them.

Obviously the Europeans are really good as well so I think we're pretty close to them and the only teams that are kind of a level above us right now are Complexity and Liquid, which Liquid I don't know for sure but just assuming based on their results.

Looking at your trajectory, you've been playing at the NA tier 2 level for a while now with EG Black, then Party Astronauts briefly, and now with Nouns. What has that been like for you and have there been moments of frustration that you haven't been able to sort of return to tier one?

I thought about quitting after EG Black when I didn't get promoted with the rest of the guys, which was kind of a big blow for me. But I got a reinvigoration for the game when CS2 came out and a little bit after that I was just playing for fun and I was like maybe I should try playing you know for real.

So I can't just go to tier one after not playing for seven months, it's not going to work. So I'm not like "tier one's the goal", I just want to be in a squad that I think can go far and has potential you know? If you have players that you know that have "it" like that factor of "I know I wanna be tier one eventually" and I feel like a lot of players in this team has that ["it factor"] so I'm really happy to be here because I think they're only going to grow over time and I can help them grow in that process.

During your time away from your playing role you spent a while with Mindbody Esports. What can you tell me about your time with him and what impact has it had with you long term?

I just was kind of feeling out what I wanted to do if I wasn't going to play and that was one of the venues I guess I was going down. I know Edward pretty closely, the owner/CEO of MindBody Esports and he's a really cool, really chill guy and he always told me like when I was playing with him or other teams that one day when you're done playing come work for me.

I always thought he was trolling me but he was serious and it was more like a mentorship thing like I was just kind of learning from him. I wasn't really super involved yet. I was just kind of sitting in with him on calls. Funnily enough, I actually worked with Nouns, I worked with some of the guys that I'm actually playing with and it was hard not to talk about CS because when you're trying to do performance coaching you're usually trying to fix out-of-game stuff to make them better in game but because I know so much it was hard for them not to ask me CS questions all the time.

But yeah, it was great. I really love Edward and maybe in the future I'll go back to that, but I think it was important for me to do that to realize I'm not just done playing yet.

In nouns we don't hear as much about cJ and what role he has on the team. He's someone who's been around for almost as long as you have, he was playing EPL years ago and now he's back with this Nouns squad. He's been a consistent piece on that roster for a long time, so what roles does he play to make him an integral piece?

I feel like cJ is... the best way I can put it is he's a soldier. He'll never really stray from the path. He doesn't let his emotions get the best of him, he does what he's told and he doesn't really complain, which is really important and honestly can be hard to find.

He has probably one of the best attitudes I've played with in terms of his mentality overall, so I can see why he would stay based on that. On top of that he has a lot of individual skill, he plays a lot of important spots and he multifrags all the time, so if he's on, we're pretty much always going to win.

The final big change that Nouns had made was replacing SEMPHIS as a head coach with adreN. As someone who was always in your periphery during your tier-one career, what's it like working with him now as a mind for the game and what does he offer that can take Nouns to the next level?

It's very interesting because I always played against him. I never really played in a team with him or worked with him in a coaching role or anything. I've always played against him so that's interesting and to see how he works as a human and as a coach. He brings a lot of stability to the team. We have a lot of young guys on the team so some attitudes can get out of control and he tries to keep that in check.

He makes sure that we're prepared for not just practice but also matches with game plans and he does a lot of work outside the game obviously as a coach because we don't have an analyst. So he has to do a lot of that preparation and I feel like the fact that he has a family at home and he still does all this and travels and stuff is really respectable so he's spending the time and I really enjoy having him as a coach, I think he's good for not just them but for me as well.

Final question before I let you go. You mentioned timbermen are the most likely team you're going to meet in the finals. When it really comes down to the wire are you guys afraid at all or is it going to be a pretty easy day for Nouns tomorrow?

I don't think it will ever be easy, especially in the environment we are in. A LAN environment where, to be honest the PCs aren't that great but we're all on the same playing field so it's not worth complaining about because we're all playing on the same low FPS or whatever problems there might be.

I think nerves can get the best of them or us. It just depends on who starts out strong and can maintain their mentality throughout. But I do think overall based on the results we've had versus them we should win and if we don't it'll be disappointing, but also it's not impossible by any means.