On Friday, Disguised got eliminated from the LTA North Split 3 after their loss against Cloud9 in the lower bracket. With a close series going all the way to five games, Head Coach Ian "ido" McCormick discusses with Sheep Esports the results, the year, and the upcoming relegation match later this year.

You came into the series as underdogs. How did players feel going into the series?

Ian "ido" McCormick: "It started from the beginning of the week. We framed everything around that we are underdogs, and it is going to be a difficult match. And everyone has their own individual percentage in their head of the chance to win, but we started the week making team goals together. Usually, I set the goals, but I wanted them to set goals this week. And then on top of those team goals, we set individual goals for each of them. They can share it or not; that is up to them. But the goal was through working on those team goals, and through the individual goals, that over time, that percentage in their head would go up. Coming into the match, I think everyone felt about as good as they could. C9 is a really strong team. Everyone knew the odds were stacked against us, but I think we weren't counting ourselves out or anything. I think we had a good chance to win.

Though you lost today, is there any of the players' performances that impressed you?

ido: Honestly, DARKWINGS (Isaac Chou) and Exyu (Lawrence Xu). Specifically for DARKWINGS, when he came onto the team, I was telling him: "We'll start with screwing these guys, and these kinds of mids are okay, you'll do fine versus them". And then later on, it was versus Saint (Kang Seon-in) and Loki (Lee Sang-min), where I'm like: "Today's going to be a hard day for you".

At first, he was getting completely run by Loki, but today he really stepped up to the plate. He didn't gap him or anything, but he definitely held his ground, and then in team fights, in quite a lot of them, he was actually outperforming Loki as well. Not to put it as a one-to-one role thing, but I think he's definitely improved a lot since we first got him, and Loki was that benchmark for him.

Then for Exyu, one problem he has is losing his head in teamfight, where he thinks just because they're in engage range and we're strong, we should go. But then he goes, and then his team's all the way back here. And "Oh, I thought I had the angle". So we've done a lot of work with him to make sure that when we have control, we keep our space. Make sure they come into our space, and then we can go, so that our carries can hit, and it's not all just about who he can hit. So I think he did a great job. Most of the fights, Exyu was really playing within the range of who was important in our comp. We did still have some mishaps, of course, but he's not gonna change completely overnight. So there was definitely some improvement there for sure.

You've had quite the year so far, from being in NACL to being team-less in NACL and then being in LTA. How has the year been for you?

ido: It's kind of crazy to think that it hasn't even been a year, it's only been seven months so far. But I think everything right now, I just have to be thankful for the fucked up things that happened along the way. If the fucked up things didn't happen, there's a world where I'm not here.

And kind of every day here, I go back and forth with like, I hate this, this sucks, and then this is actually awesome. I love it. We're the best team in the world. I love these guys. But I think that's kind of the relationship every coach has. We're just: "Oh, I hate these guys", and then I love them, and then I hate them again.

But we're really a family. It feels like we can fight, and then we'll talk it out. We'll get into kind of a big argument, walk away from each other, and then come back and say: "Hey, I'm sorry". And I think that's led to a lot of our improvement. It's just been great to be around them. I really do cherish my time with these players.

What would you say is the biggest growth you've seen within the team?

ido: It's learning how to have faith that they can win the game normally. In Splits 1 and 2, it felt like they were just swinging for the fences the first chance they got because they didn't believe that they could win the game any other way.
I was actually just talking to Huhi (Choi Jae-hyun) outside about it, where he's like, "You just have to fucking flip the game earlier or else we're going to lose". In Split 3, we still had some of those tendencies earlier. And I had to be really hard on them that "Guys, please fucking try to play the game the right way." Small wins like, "They lost a wave, that's a win, we got a summoner, that's a win, we got base advantage, that's a win". And then you build those up. We kind of refer to League as boxing.

In the early rounds of boxing, you don't come out and you just start swinging for a knockout, because you're going to leave yourself and get yourself knocked out. So you build it up by taking little jabs at them, making them tired, making them hurt. And then once they're hurt and they're tired and it's round six, that's when you can swing for them and knock them out. And that analogy has come up a couple of times, and it's been pretty useful for them to realize that you do have to build up to it when you don't just like end the game at eight minutes.

Even though you are eliminated from the LTA split, DSG still have to play the relegation match. What are your thoughts about that?

ido: Yeah, I've been keeping a pretty close eye on NACL and LRN the whole year. NACL, I think, has dropped off a little bit.

Even with the 50-minute pause?

ido: It completely killed the vibes of our dinner [Laugh]. We were all watching it on the big screen. The 10-minute pause turns into a 50-minute one. Rahel (Cho Min-seong) says, "I'm gonna go play solo queue, I'm not watching this anymore". 20-minute pause. Castle (Cho Hyeon-seong) says, "I'm out". So that was crazy. Supernova looks a little bit weaker. Conviction looks stronger than I think people thought they would have been for a streamer team. And then, DZ got knocked out already.

So, I think that it's pretty up for grabs who's going to be second. I think LG for sure is the most consistent, and then LRN is also crazy with the Estral roster, it's hard to say how it's going to pan out. I think there are some strong teams, but I think almost all of them struggle with consistency. So it'll be interesting to see how the season actually finishes for NACL and LRN. And then even more than that, when the promo relegation tournament comes around, it's like four best-of-fives. So anything can happen. Whoever shows up on the day is kind of advantaged.

What DSG fans should take away from today's performance?

ido: Personally, if I were a DSG fan, I would be wondering why I was still here for 90% of the year, and then the other 10% of me is already saying goodbye to the team, like it's a done thing, they're relegated. So I hope that taking one of the best teams in North America to a game five, that if things go a little differently, maybe we would have won that too. I hope that gives people faith that we'll keep the spot, because we really do think we will now, as long as we keep improving as well. The job is not done, and there are strong teams down there. So I just want them to walk away from this series as there's hope, the spot will be retained, and your fandom wasn't for nothing. And we really appreciate everyone who is along for this insufferable ride. We really appreciate it."