With a 1st place finish in the Group Stage of POWER Liga (winning 10 out of 14 matches) and going 3-0 in the Group Stage of the CCT North Europe Series 4 without dropping a single map, it's safe to say that our Talent team is on fire at the moment.
Furthermore, yesterday they secured the Quarterfinal spot by beating Copenhagen Flames in a convincing 2-0 fashion yesterday, and will be fighting for a spot in the Semifinal tonight at 19:00 CET against SINNERS.
In a recent interview with Dust2.dk, our coach, R0nic, spoke on the team's current success, and we wanted to dive deeper into the reason for their recent succes and what their goals are in the near future.
"If I had to say it myself, then this is the best Talent-team that Astralis has had, taking our latest results into consideration."
We asked the Astralis Talent coach to elaborate:
- After MistR and I joined the team again, we chose to start from scratch on everything. We had to lay a new foundation for the team, find new roles and find our identity as a team.
- We quickly chose to plan a bootcamp, where we could develop as fast as possible. Together with our Performance Coach, Jan Ø. Jørgensen, we have made a "team-contract", which we are actively using to make sure we do the things everyday that secures a "great performance" in our team environment.
International Results
As mentioned previously, end of February, we played the Closed Qualifier for CCT North Europe 4, where we beat two of the higher-ranked danish teams, MASONIC and ECSTATIC, on our road to qualification.
On March 1, the $50,000 tournament started for our Talents as we faced Sangal in our initial matchup. Our opponents was no match for our Talents as, as we won 16-3 on the first map. It was a much closer affair on the second map, Anubis, which we managed to win 16-14.
Since the Group Stage is based on the swiss-system format, we faced another team, who won their first match, which turned out to be the Bulgarian squad, VOYVODA, ranked #49.
Patti was ready from start on Mirage and achieved a 1.66 rating with 27 frags and 125 ADR, helping the team secure the first map 16-12. We chose Anubis as the second map, which ended 16-11 in our favor. Altekz and MistR were close to reaching 30 frags. Both finished on 29 frags - crucial to our second 2-0 victory.
With a 2-0 swiss score, we were now one match away from the Playoffs. Our next opponent Nexus, ranked #60, chose Mirage as their battleground. Despite a close 8-7 halftime score, our T-side was too strong for the Romanian squad as we took the victory 16-11.
Three secure 2-0 victories against some great teams mean we secured a spot in the Playoffs. As if it wasn't enough, Altekz was named the MVP of the Group Stage!
The results are clear, and R0nic speaks more specifically on the growth of the team:
- I would say that we've developed us pretty fast ingame, especially Patrick "Patti" Larsen is continuously evolving in the ingame-leader role and have been crucial in our recent success. Besides that, both MistR and Altekz has shown an increase in level from the previous lineups, which is of course attributed by the always stable level of br0 and Kristou. Besides that, we've created a really great foundation and stability for this project and it is finally showing in the results.
- In addition to that, we're of course playing many official matches and practicing very hard.
Our fight for the Semifinals against SINNERS begins today, March 15, at 19:00 CET and can be watched here.
The Astralis Talent Lineup
- Kristoffer "Kristou" Aamand
- Mikkel "MistR" Thomsen
- Patrick "Patti" Larsen
- Alexander "Altekz" Givskov
- Alexander "br0" Bro
- Mathias "R0nic" Pinholt (Coach)
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