ODENSE, DENMARK -- In the background of the CS:GO history being written by Astralis at the ESL Pro League S8 finals last weekend, NRG quietly closed out their season. The North American team looked great against MIBR in the upper bracket, making their regional counterparts sweat and work for the 2-1 victory.
In the lower bracket though, NRG got elminated by Ghost Gaming. Ghost came into Odense well-prepared, armed with mindgames to tackle NRG and were able to knock them out in an exciting best-of-three showdown. Despite this, though, NRG finish year happy with their rise to international Tier-2 status.
ESPN talked to NRG's in-game leader, Damian "daps" Steele, about NRG's year, the matchup with Ghost and thoughts on their T-side game.
ESPN: In general, recap your 2018 so-far. It's been a crazy year for you guys coming out of the depths of NA CS to be a consistent top-8 team. Generally speaking, how would you evaluate your year?
Daps: I would say we definitely exceeded expectations. Obviously expectations increase the more success you have. So I think we sort of have to temper expectations in a one-year span. But I think we definitely exceeded our expectations and I think we should be happy with how this year went. I think 2019 will be the true test of whether we are actually a top-tier team or not. I think we have found the formula for staying in the top-10 conversation no matter what. But I think the next step is to find that consistency to actually make it to the finals of a big tournament every time.
ESPN: What is the high end of these expectations for next year? The ceiling for this lineup is an interesting factor in trying to map out goals, right?
Daps: There are a few things. So, I think the overall skill of the team and composition is very good when we're all playing at a high level. The problem is different people show up, different people disappear a lot of the times. I've said it a bunch of times, trying to find that consistency has been a tough thing for us. I think we're going to try a sports psychologist next year which could help bring some consistency and someone to talk to if people want that.
I know Astralis and Liquid both have that and have big support teams. We don't really have anything other than coach. So I think that could be something that helps with consistency. After that, if we can't find consistency with a good support team, then maybe roster change. But we're not really at that point yet I don't think.
ESPN: Do you think one course of action, on top of maybe fleshing out your support team before roster moves, would be skipping events?
Daps: Yeah I think that is the reason why we went to every event we got invited to this year. I don't think we were in a position where we could turn events down. Especially if they're $100,000 or more. I think the only events we turn down are Dreamhack Open events. Other than that, we're in a position where we've solidified ourselves in the top eight, for now. I don't think we can lose enough points to go below anyone. I think we're in that good sixth or seventh spot for the rest of the year which means we should have gotten some invites and should get more hopefully. After that, we can determine which events we want to go to and which we don't.
Even this year, even before Chicago, we went to Summit. Obviously we won Summit, but in my opinion we shouldn't have gone to Summit if we wanted to do better at Chicago. It's the same at this event -- we went to three events directly in a row with no time home. So we went to ECS, straight to Malta, straight to here. So I think if we wanted to do well in Odense we shouldn't have [gone] to Malta.
ESPN: That transitions nicely to talking to this event and your performance at it. Here, you lost to Ghost in a best-of-three after playing MIBR close in the upper bracket. I saw steel closely watching that MIBR match in the player lounge, seems to be an important regional rivalry. Do you think it was more so you guys under-performing, them over-performing or a mix of both?
Daps: I think it was a mixture of both. I think Ghost is a team that's proven that. I've always thought that Wardell and Subroza are very good players. They just sort of have never had a leader to lead them. I think Wardell is one of the best NA born AWPers. I think Wardell might actually be the best actual born in NA AWPer currently.
Steel has good pieces that he's working with. They've obviously had a lot of time to prepare for this event because they don't go to many. I think we did play a lot worse against them than against MIBR. I think we should've won the MIBR best-of-three when we were up 15-12. Versus Ghost I think you could tell we were very flustered and incoherent rather than against MIBR. Even on Inferno we lost a lot of bad rounds against Ghost and we somehow won Inferno anyways.
ESPN: Could you break down a bit more the preparation of the match and tournament?
Daps: I think we sort-of underestimated Ghost a little bit. I think, we felt like at Summit we could've beaten them a lot easier, like a 2-0. Coming into this matchup, we noticed a lot of the strats they ran, they threw fakes off of them because they watch demos. So we came into this match not really preparing for them. We should be able to beat them playing our own game.
I know steel does put a lot of time into preparation and stuff. So we just took the approach, like, "we're better than them", "we should beat them." I don't think our preparation really lost us the game. I just think individually, we just played bad. And I think they just played their normal game and just beat us.