G2 trent: "We have just much more variety and just more depth in our game than the other regions"

After their defeat to Paper Rex earlier this week, G2 Esports bounced back against Team Liquid to become the third VCT Americas team to qualify for the VALORANT Champions playoffs. It also marks the third consecutive year that the team has reached this stage of the competition.

Following a solid two-map victory, Trent "trent" Cairns answered Sheep Esports' questions after the match. One of the longest-standing members of the roster reflected on G2's performance since the beginning of the competition and the last-chance narrative surrounding the team.

Trent "trent" Cairns: “I feel very good. I think this game was very good for us as individuals. We started to shine individually and make good plays. Overall, I don't think we played the best game, but I think it's very good for us confidence-wise, and now we can start to be more of a team going into playoffs and watch these rounds back on how it kind of fell apart for us in certain scenarios. Then we can kind of make sure that we don't get in too many clutch scenarios for the next games.

trent: They did a good job changing their game plan. We had a game plan going into it, and it kind of wasn't working, so we had to call a pause, figure it out, and talk amongst the team about what we needed to do, and those pauses were good on both maps. Honestly, we had a game plan, and they countered it pretty well, so props to them on that. They had a great game plan going into it, but I think we were just able to overcome what they were doing regardless of it, so I'm very happy that we were able to do that.

trent: Honestly, I think we're playing pretty well. Like I said, this was a very good individual confidence booster for the team for sure, and now we kind of just need to re-watch the tapes of these three games and make sure that our team play is more together with the couple days that we'll have off. We're going to focus hard on the team play, making sure that our comms are good and making sure that we are just more of a team, and if we continue with the form that we're in, I think we'll have a very good tournament.

trent: I think this tournament will be different because our individual form is there, and usually it's like the opposite. Usually we're a really good team, and our communication is very good, and our plans are very good, but we're lacking on the shots and just not having those clutch moments. So I think us having the clutch moments, the good form going into the tournament, and kind of finding our team identity and our communication as a team and plans as a team together will be easier than finding our form and the clutches. I think this tournament would be different for that reason.

trent: Yeah, I definitely feel very confident right now. I feel like I'm hitting my shots, I'm very confident in how I'm picking things, just my individual play for sure, and I think our whole team is. We're pretty unleashed right now, and we're finding our timings, we're hitting our clutches, we're hitting our shots, and now, like I've been saying, we just need to come together as a team.

trent: He's playing great. He's a 31-year-old caster, and he's at champions and made it to playoffs, so you can't really ask too much more from the guy [Laughs]. But he's playing well; he's really focused on his individual play, and that's kind of what we wanted from him. We want him to be the guy who doesn't talk as much until he's dead, and we're kind of just telling him what to do.

He has his own plays, of course, that he calls, but for the most part in the rounds, he's kind of just trying to get his shot and make sure that his fights are set up well. And then the other four guys, we kind of move around him and try to figure it out, so I would say we have a good system with him, and it's working out very well. He's hitting his shots, and he's in the right places at the right time, and that's all we can ask of him, so I think he's doing really good.

trent: It's kind of pushed out all the noise from the outside, and we're kind of just talking amongst us in the camp and in the team and kind of just hard focusing on this tournament. There was a question at the very beginning of the tournament for our features, which was “What would you do if this was your last Champions?” And that has really stuck with us. We say it all the time, and we're kind of just fully motivated, fully locked in. We don’t pay attention to the outside noise; everything we do is just for performance, and only performance.

So whether that's taking a day off for health, taking a day off for your mental health, or whatever it may be, everything is focused on the game. And I really think that none of the outside factors are doing anything to us, besides maybe even giving us more fire. So yeah, I don't think that it changed our mentality too much. We're kind of just throwing it all on the table, going all in, and see what happens.

trent: I think the Americas region has so much variety of play. You have ENVY, who's going to run you down, and then you have NRG, who's super methodical. You have us, who are super methodical, and then you have LOUD, who's like a fully different playstyle from everyone; they're very methodical, they walk around the map, and they'll pop on you, or they'll just walk you down with an Operator.

So we have all these different playstyles that we all have to play against in our own region that a lot of these other teams don't have. When you look at China, they all play the same. When you look at Pacific, most of the teams like to play very similar, same with EMEA, they have a very slower playstyle. And so the majority of all these other regions play the same, but when you play against an Americas team, it's not. You get a game plan for every Americas team. So I think that's the biggest thing. We have just much more variety and just more depth in our game than the other regions.