Fans always love such matchups, showing them a different side of their favourite players. Instead of battling it out against some “other” team, they have to contend with who they once played with, potentially having the power to eliminate those old friends from the tournament. That’s exactly what headtr1ck did as his team took the game to overtime, only to beat NIP 16-14. Although they lost to The MongolZ in the very next game, BB wasn’t expecting to win - instead, they hope to deliver in their next match to get that second-seed spot.
What did headtr1ck say?
Given that BB versus NIP was a very important game for headtr1ck, despite being a best-of-one, HLTV made sure to interview him thoroughly after the day concluded.
When asked about what it was like to face off against his former team, headtr1ck said
Yeah, there are still many people there I was working with. It was a bit weird because when I joined TeamSpeak, I accidentally joined the NIP room, and the admin was laughing about it.It was a good match, I didn't think they played bad, they played pretty good CS. I'm happy with our T side, we managed to show a good start. There were some important clutches, and overall, as a team, on the T side, we were doing pretty well.
Everyone was doing their job, what they need to do, but on the CT side it felt like they had executes all of the time and it worked pretty well against us. I'm happy we managed to win, eventually. We were peeking well together, everyone was getting their kills, and that's very important — especially in best-of-ones. It's good to beat them, I was feeling more confident.
When asked about his subsequent, albeit one-sided game against The MongolZ, headtr1ck said
We started good on Inferno. It's not a map like Nuke where we can be lurked around and get surrounded by the Ts, so we were feeling more confident. We showed a close CT side, but when we lost the T-side pistol, that was the key round. They started to get a better economy, which is very important on Inferno.
On Nuke we were just not as good as we had been in the NIP game in terms of individual duels. We lost many duels. If, at the start of the match, some of the rounds went our way, we won some retakes, the game could have been a little bit different. Inferno was a lot closer, but we just need to reset better, and everyone needs to find their way to reset. After a first map against good opponents, it's very important to be stronger in the second map. I think we did, but eventually, it felt like nothing was working — especially on the T side.
When asked about how BB is going to go about their next games and the overall direction of the team, headtr1ck said
It will be a very important few months for us because we have three LAN tournaments, which will be very important in terms of getting more points and more invites next year. That's very important for us and for B8 as an organization. I think we've showed some good CS. We started from the bottom. We lost my first five officials with the team, but we've started to gain some confidence.
We've had a winning streak and we've won against some great teams online, even top 20 and top 30 teams. We found our way to consistently play well online, but now it's very important to keep doing it on LAN. It's a way different atmosphere here. We have experienced players, I just think we need to get back in shape for the upcoming matches no matter who's next.
Many of us have already played on LAN. Maybe not essential, but the rest have. We all need to be 10 or 20 percent better at everything, in terms of communication and individually, and then we will be fine as we are online. We have good potential, but the upcoming months will be very important.
