After a tense series against Disguised in the lower bracket of LTA North Split 3, Cloud9 secured the win and avoided elimination. Coach Nicholas "Inero" Smith spoke with Sheep Esports after the series about the Zeri pick for Lee "Loki" Sang-min on the midlane, and the match results.

How was the series?

Nicholas "Inero" Smith: "The series wasn't great, so not an amazing series. I'm feeling more relieved than anything. I think it would have been pretty embarrassing to lose. Honestly, going 2-3 was embarrassing enough in itself. So, happy to come away with a win, but not with how it went.

Did you have any specific plans or strategies playing against DSG?

Inero: It's clear that their mid wants to play control mages ideally. In game one, we didn't care too much whether he would be playing Yone or not. We were happy to play into it. Either he's going to play like Ziggs or Taliyah, if he goes Yone, we would be happy with that. Regardless, I think DARKWINGS (Isaac Choudid) well. Obviously, later in the series, we're expecting that he's gonna be playing mages, and if he's not, we should be in a happy position. We didn't care too much about those things.

And then obviously we were expecting them to draft to get their bot ahead. Rahel (Cho Min-seong) is a big force on that team, so we expected him to be set up to succeed. They always try to do that, playing like Varus-Karma in the first game. They really want to have a bot advantage and a bot lead. In some situations, we think that matters, but in others, it doesn't. I mean, everything went about according to plan. We didn't want to get to our game five thing in this versus DSG, but we got to pull up Loki's secret pick.

This was unexpected...

Inero: Well, it was unexpected for us, too, to be doing it today. We were hoping to do that versus Team Liquid, 100 Thieves, Shopify Rebellion, FlyQuest, but every game Loki gets that champion, he drops. It's crazy. He's too good.

How does it feel for the team to have to reveal two pocket picks — with Rek'Sai top — this early, as you didn't want to show it against DSG?

Inero: I don't think anyone cares too much about that because we play a lot of different things, and we specifically stopped practicing that this week to practice other things. They kind of know about it, so we need to have some other picks. There are obviously other secret picks that we have, which we'll play. Everyone would feel more disappointed that we had another series where we had a game that was won, and we threw it, and we eventually lost. And we've done that in every important series so far. Everyone's really disappointed with that. As a coach, I'm really upset with this type of thing happening. Our team will just be disappointed that we were ever at a 2-2 situation versus DSG. If we were 3-1, we would have also been a little upset with ourselves. So I think everyone's going to be more focused on that rather than, "Oh, we showed Zeri".

What would you rate today's draft as the LeBron James of drafting? Where would you put it on the board?

Inero: Today was fine. Our games 1 and 2 were just bread and butter. Super simple. We were happy with these. We know we will just win these games. Game 3, we didn't expect them to do this like the Poppy and Anivia thing.Veigarv2 (Marius Aune) talked about this a lot, saying it was a good answer to mages. But I was not expecting any other team to really do it. It was a really good answer, but I still think our situation in that game was winnable, although it should have been hard. Ryze has a tough time in that game. We told Loki afterwards in that game, "It's effectively your job to die so other people can deal damage, but because of how the game started off, it's too hard for you." It would take Smolder so many rotations to kill them, so he would die before his death even mattered. So, that one was rough.

I wasn't a fan of our approach for game four. I didn't like that one. I didn't think we were doing ourselves a service to really set up for first pick Xin Zhao. We knew we were going to get left with Xin on that, and that was going to be what they would give us. I didn't think it was very good. I talked to Blaber (Robert Huang) afterwards too, and He agrees. We're both on the same page. This wasn't the approach we should have taken. Xin needs something to fight with. He's not fighting with Hwei. This is so bad. So it was rough. Then game five, we've practiced that combo constantly together, we knew this. Loki came in after game five and said, "Give me Zeri, I will carry, just let me play Zeri". And it's like, cool conditions work, we're going to make him play Zeri this game.

Earlier this year, you got Christian "IWillDominate" Rivera as a coach. How has he been helping C9, and mostly Blaber?

Inero: "Dom" has helped a lot with the scouting stuff. We talk about all of this together. About the team we're playing, what we're going to do versus them, what they do regularly, their trends, and everything like that. Related to the team, IWD brings a lot of concepts out that he thinks we're not really talking about enough. He had a really good impact this week; he honestly made the biggest impact through the week of anyone. We were talking about our Atakhan's and things we're doing wrong with that. It mattered a lot even in this series, and it made our scrims this week feel a lot cleaner around Atakhan. So I was really happy.

It's good to have someone there who comes from outside, has a really good idea of the game, watches a lot of it, and brings different concepts that maybe you're not tunneled into right now because you're focused on other things. So it's been nice. He and Veigarv2 have come forward with things like, "Hey, I think this is something we should be working on; Hey, Reapered (Bok Han-gyu), we should be doing this, we need to focus on this thing." And then they both obviously work with the individual players together. I think Dom wants to kill Blaber sometimes, but this is how it goes.

How do you see Loki's development and what type of player do you see him becoming?

Inero: Loki came in as the Aurora-Yone guy. When we were in Korea in December, he was spamming those champions, winning every game if we got those, and he struggled with a lot of others. His Azir at the start was not very good. Veigarv2 worked a lot on that. Now it's just: "Hey Azir, here's a free win". If we could have Azir, this game is just over. We don't care what we play against, the game is over. He's had a couple of champions throughout the year where he was not the best. But we play it, and eventually it gets better. Ryze was another one of those where it's like: "I don't really want you playing Ryze in an important game, this isn't the thing we want to do", but he's gotten a lot better at it and now we feel comfortable with it. Galio was the same. God, you should have seen his first Galio games, they were terrible. Veigarv2 wrote after the scrim, "We can never pick him Galio." We need to play other champions.

Loki is very young and he's very eager to pick up anything he can from anyone. He's down to listen to anything. So as a coach, that's when you have a person like that that you can have the most impact. Because they are literally just down to listen to what you say and do it. So him and Veigarv2 are constantly talking. I talked to Loki all the time too about a bunch of different other things, and Veigarv2 has got this guy to pick up any champion we really want him to do, it's awesome. I love working with Loki. He's a good kid. He's got a good attitude. He's very motivated.

Today we were really happy. There was a pretty good breakthrough that Veigarv2 talked about after the game because we told Loki so much throughout the year. We want him to to tell us what he wants. I want to know him to say, "I can play this. Okay, I can play that". Bro, say "I want this champion" and we'll make it happen. Thanatos (Park Seung-gyu) is a rookie who is really good at doing that. Saying, "I want to play Renekton this game, get me Renekton, and I will carry." And it's like, "Okay, yes, sir. I'll do whatever you want, Thanatos. I'll make it happen. I'll make a good draft for you to do that."

Today, look, came in after game 4, he said, "I want to play Zeri. Let's get a Zeri game. Just give me Zeri." Yeah, it's good. That's what I want to hear honestly. We'll make a situation for that to exist in draft and we'll build something that makes sense.

Do you have any like message to the fans?

Inero: Thanks, guys, sorry for the heart attack. I'm sure everyone loved that. I can't wait to look at my phone later and see how many times I've been told that I'm shit at what I'm doing, I'm shit at drafting, and then thank God we won to come right afterwards. It's gonna be great. So thanks to them. They all give me shit, and it's very fun, and I enjoy it. So yeah, cheers to the fans."