After delivering an outstanding regular season campaign that saw them finish at the top of the standings,
are hoping to maintain that momentum heading into the playoffs. Their opening match, however, proved far less convincing for the teammates of newly crowned MVP
, as they were stopped in their tracks by
in the first round of the upper bracket.
Following a defeat that appeared to serve as a reality check, Team Vitality head coach Patrick “Pad” Suckow-Breum spoke with Sheep Esports about the team’s first playoff setback and made it clear that his squad has no intention of letting the run end there.
What is your first feeling after the game?
Patrick "Pad" Suckow-Breum: “Disappointment, just disappointment.
To talk about the game, you won against MKOI in the regular season, you were the one picking them for this game for the first game of the playoffs, what kind of matchup did you expect against them?
Pad: Our choice was between G2 and MKOI, so I think it's just a natural choice when you have those two lovely homies to choose from. It was not that MKOI was weaker or a free pick. I think we chose them because they're not G2. I expected something similar to what we had in EWC and in the regular season, where we go in and we have some lovely fistfight games and whoever plays faster and drafts better for botlane priority comes out ahead. We were expecting that and I think that's exactly what happened. Unfortunately we weren't in the good side today.
I think there's a lot of stuff we can look at from gameplay of course, but I think primarily I just let the boys down in game 1 and 2 in the draft. I think that those drafts were much too hard to play and didn’t line up well with how we imagined this matchup would go.
You haven't really been able to disturb them in the early game as your team's strength usually is. Do you feel like it was one of the main problems today for your team?
Pad: Yeah, for sure.
(
Javier Prades) got a stronger jungle matchup in 1v1 three games in a row, he had bot priority three games or two and half games and mid priority two games. If you look at it from that standpoint, someone of Elyoya's caliber will take over games, right? And he did that today, so good to them and good to him.
Do you feel like there was some pressure in the mindset of your team knowing that you were starting the playoffs as the first seed and the one picking your opponent?
Pad: No, I don't think that there was a big part of pressure today. I think that for the most part, what we show today isn't really reflective of how we are as a team. I think that the fact that we end up with drafts without bot priority for this amount of games in a row typically means that you have to rely on the enemy team not navigating early games well. And I think that when that's the case, you just can't do that against teams that are doing good. So I don't think it was that much about pressure but mostly just draft today.
We spoke a lot about schedules recently. Your team hasn't played an official game since Fnatic, 20 days ago. In comparison, KOI played last week for the EWC Qualifier and the week before for the Roadtrip in Madrid. Do you feel like it was kind of a nerf for your team to not be in the right momentum to start the playoff?
Pad: It's definitely not ideal to have 20 days in between officials. I think for the most part we've tried to do a really good job of fixing issues in both our early and mid-game and adding new set pieces to how we want to play the game. Obviously those things didn't come out today, but yeah, I would say having like this big break in between isn’t the reason why we lost, but it's definitely not optimal for being ready to be on stage.
To speak about some more positive news, Naak Nako won the Spring Split MVP just before the game. What was your first reaction when you saw that he won it?
Pad: Happy for him. He's an amazing player. He contributes so much to us, not just in-game, also as a human being on this team. I think that this title is justified. I think the only other contender for this title would be
(
Joseph Pyun), and I think that he was a bit angry today with not winning the title [
Laughs].
How would you say he deserves it more than Jojopyun or even Alan “Busio” Cwalina, based on the regular season?
Pad: I'm not really sure if it's about who deserves it more or not. Obviously, we couldn't vote for Naak, and we did vote for Jojo, I believe, because the guy is just having an amazing split, probably the best split in his career maybe. So I think it just comes down to who you like the most. I think they have been very similar in individual performances.
On the other hand, some fans were a bit upset when they saw the All-Pro teams yesterday because they thought that Vitality players weren't as respected as they should for a team that ended up first. Is that a feeling that you share?
Pad: It's a bit of a Mickey Mouse price. It’s done by teams and journalists, and it’s not always super serious. I think you probably shouldn't read too much into it. I get where it's coming from because if you look at our run, we ended at 8-1, but our last two games in the regular split were 2-1 versus SK and Fnatic that weren’t super dominating either. Then we went on to lose in EWC as well. So I get why votes aren’t all my players at number one. I think it makes sense.
You feel like the voters had a recency bias?
Pad: Maybe. I think it's just being realistic, right? I think if there's a voting right after we beat G2 and Koi, is there anyone that's going to put players over ours when we've just beaten them? Probably not, but at the same time I think that this voting is just not that big of a deal for us, so it doesn't really matter to me where my player plays. It matters to me where they place themselves and where we place ourselves.
We often speak about the players for the All-Pro teams but if coaches were included in the discussion, would you put yourself in one of these teams?
Pad: Today I don't feel particularly good so I'm not going to put myself anywhere. I think I had a good development from winter to spring. Unfortunately one of the sore points in winter was our drafts and I think that for spring we've been getting really good. So that just makes me double sad that we didn't manage to find good solutions today.
Your next game will be against GIANTX and the rest of your run will be in the lower bracket. How do you plan to bounce back with your team?
Pad: We're going to go straight back to the office after this, and we'll review our lovely drafts, we'll watch a little bit of gameplay, and then we'll review the gameplay after our day off. We're just going to have to make sure that we go and draft better into the off-series. We've had two wonderful weeks of practice even though we haven't had stage games. I think we've developed so much in these two weeks, and I think that I really want to show not just the Vitality fans but also the EU fans what we look like when we are sharp, and today was not the case. That's just motivation for me to come and show that this is definitely not our average level.”
