slaxz-: "We didn't have any kind of balls in our map control"

Expectations were high for M80 at DreamHack Challenger Atlanta, but an 0-1 and 0-2 loss at the hand of their rivals in Wildcard quickly saw those high hopes fizzle out.

After the best-of-three loss to Wildcard, M80's AWPer Fritz "slaxz-" Dietrich spoke to Dust2.us about handling pressures as a favorite, the evolving rivalry with Wildcard, and what needs to be corrected before the Perfect World Major RMR in China.

The full interview and transcription can be found below.

Definitely wasn’t the result you guys were expecting here today. What do you think went wrong today?

Not only this game but the whole tournament, there’s so much that went wrong. We didn’t play [like] ourselves at all. Our T-sides have been very hard because we are playing different than [the way] we are used to. This is the first time we’re the favorites coming into a tournament, and dealing with this pressure was apparently very hard for us. We didn’t have any, I’d say, balls when it comes to our map control, so we basically played without it.

Do you think you were overconfident as the favorites?

We definitely didn’t play overconfident, because we played without a lot of confidence. Maybe it’s because we had the upper hand coming into a LAN, instead of being the underdog playing without pressure. I couldn’t really tell you why.

We heard Sonic say that you should be worried about Wildcard now at the RMR. Does this loss give you any concerns about that event?

I don’t think how we view Wildcard changes at all. I don’t want to take anything away from their win; they play good Counter-Strike and they always play controlled, stanislaw is doing some nice stuff. But if we play like we normally do and should do then we always see ourselves one or two steps ahead of them.

They came in with a ringer in the form of Sebastian "fr3nd" Kuśmierz. What do you think about his capabilities?

I think he played fine. I don’t know how much LAN experience he has, but he had some good rounds and wasn’t shy to play.

We’ve seen you develop more confidence with the AWP. How do you feel about your progression?

This is where I want to be. I feel like sometimes it’s hard for me in close game with a lot of structured rounds because I don’t get too much freedom. But I have a lot of confidence when I get that freedom and can do what I want to do.

What’s the team going to be focusing on heading into the RMR?

Our biggest focus will be on working on our mistakes. If you have a bad game, there’s different things you need to do to help yourself. If you don’t have the confidence to do what you normally do, you need to get back to what you’ve learned and what you have, all your protocols. Once we get those protocols back, even if you don’t have a good start, we can bounce back because we know what we’re doing. Where we really can and will and want to improve is when we are in Europe.

Do you think the Vertigo pick was a mistake, in hindsight?

Not really. I think it’s their least played map in the past three months, and they didn’t win against anyone other than us in CCT, so I think the pick was fine.

How do you feel about the rivalry between you and Wildcard after today’s result?

I think this changes a lot. Previously they never beat us when it mattered. We always beat them in every qualifier and then ended up qualifying. But now it’s changed, and they even did it with a stand-in. So we have to get back and show them we are the better team.

M80 still has one more week of ESL Challenger League season play remaining, and will compete at the Thunderpick World Championship ahead of their bootcamp in Europe.