KC Reapered: "One click is all it took, and I knew my players had better clicks"

After taking down on home soil, emerged victorious in Paris with a 3-0 sweep. Now returning to Berlin, the team heads back to the LEC with valuable lessons, renewed confidence, and their sights firmly set on Worlds. Following the weekend in Paris, head coach Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu sat down with Sheep Esports for a brief interview to reflect on the team's performance and the key takeaways from the event.

Bok "Reapered" Han-gyu: “It wasn't that stressful. I was just enjoying the game, right? One click is all it took for victory, and I just knew that my players had better clicks.

Reapered: Well, it certainly was a match between the best two teams in the LEC [laughs]. G2 did great at MSI, we did great at EWC. We were still struggling to find ourselves and how to improve at the former—that MSI run was depressing. We found those solutions during EWC, and luckily for us, a lot of teams there were also quite tired from MSI, right?

Reapered: Honestly, I think our MSI performance was also due to pressure. A lot of our players started relying on each other, while nobody really had the solution. We were all like, "Yeah, I don't know what is going on, but this guy seems like he knows how to play, so let's follow this guy," and then we just lost. We were following calls without really believing in the plays we were making, and obviously those were going to be shit, right?

You don't gain anything from just following someone else's calls. Every player needs to see the game properly, understand it for themselves, and make the right plays as an individual. Since Winter, we've been asking ourselves, "KC, what is our identity?" We knew we had strong individuals and a lot of talent, but we just didn't show it at MSI. That was the problem.

So after MSI, we decided there wasn't much to gain from that tournament. The one thing we did learn was that we had relied on each other too much. We told ourselves, "Let's stand up, raise our individual standards, and then let's play like humans at EWC." And it worked.

Reapered: At MSI, I wasn’t really part of the draft. Looking back, there were definitely some regrets. Against , for example, we gave them Bard and Pyke. But my thinking was that it would give our players the best learning experience possible against one of the best roaming supports in the current meta. Playing against that in an official match is very different from scrims. The idea was that if we beat TL, we’d get another chance against T1 with a much better understanding. But, of course, it didn’t go that way.

I’m not here to blame Zeph (Quentin Viguié), though. There’s always a lot of back and forth between us on stage. We discuss different ideas and how we want to build the draft. But looking back, I wasn’t happy with how we built those drafts or where we ended up.

I also reflected on myself. In the Spring Split final against G2, I was the one who pushed for the direction we took in Game 5, and the draft ended up being a disaster. After that, I thought maybe I just shouldn’t touch the draft anymore.

But after MSI, I realized that attitude just wasn’t going to work. If you’re the leader of the team, you can’t remove yourself from such an important part of the game. So I told my players and staff that it was on me and that I would do better. And now, here we are.”