"There's no better stage for us than the grand finals to settle the score become the first Americas champions" - ethos on facing LOUD

With the regular season of franchised leagues coming to an end, VALORANT esports is experiencing peak engagements and deservedly so with the entertaining matchups it has produced across the different regions. VCT 2023 - Americas League has equally contributed to this notion with a rather interesting Playoff picture being drawn up such that NRG Esports and Evil Geniuses were scheduled a meeting in the Lower Finals. Both teams had a rough time at the start, noticed a drastic improvement in their performance and silenced quite a few doubters.

Although EG and NRG both qualified for Tokyo, only one of them prevailed to face LOUD in the Grand Finals. Following NRG’s victory, THESPIKE.GG was granted the opportunity to interview Alan "ethos" Ruan to get his thoughts on the matchup and the journey they underwent to reach this point.

From 1-3 in Regular season to GRAND finals

THESPIKE.GG: As soon as the result became apparent, what were your immediate thoughts? How did you guys react on the win?

ethos: It wasn't even so much like a sense of accomplishment but more of like a sense of finally getting into the rhythm and reaching the standard that everyone has been holding themselves to. I mean, EG is a very good team. They made incredible strides throughout the season. We had been struggling for a long struggling to maintain consistency with some very good and informed matches and others totally the opposite. So, when we were up 11-1 on that first half of the last map, we realized that this is how we should be playing and how we should be feeling at all times. All the players have been there before and know how it should feel. They're just remembering it.

THESPIKE.GG: NRG did not have the best start to the season. How that feel like from having, um, a relatively poor start according to your standards to coming to the grand finals of the league?

ethos: I think that there was a lot of disappointment, a lot of frustration at the start. We felt that we weren't losing to other teams at the start of the season but rather losing to ourselves by not playing to our standard. I think the reason why we felt that way was because we were heavily favorited to do well in the season and there were quite a few upsets to start. We expected more out of ourselves. So while there was this moment of frustration, we didn't let it like get to us and instead of having that weigh us down, we had that become more of a driving force almost like a chip on our shoulder.

We realized that it’s do or die, and we just must win out. And I think that that happened both in the regular season when we were down two three, we realized that even if we were matched against some of the top performing teams, FURIA and LOUD at the time, we need to secure the wins at any cost. There's something about having that chip on your shoulder where you feel like, okay, now there's absolutely no messing around. We must bring the absolute top performance and that mentality drives the entire team, the entire staff, and the entire project to keep functioning at the highest level possible.

THESPIKE.GG: You guys did not start off well on Haven. From not beig able to close out the map to taking three maps consecutively?

ethos: This pattern dates back as far as the OpTic days, where the team would have these troubles with the first map, no matter who they were matching up against, no matter what map, no matter what tournament it was, there was an ongoing pattern either because of first map nerves or something where the team would just not perform to the expected standard and that kind of happened today. Not to say that we weren't like, we weren't playing well on Haven. EG was also playing very well, but for us, we were making quite a few mistakes that we typically don't expect ourselves to make and those, ultimately those small mistakes lead up to, you know, differences in outcomes of rounds and those little rounds become, you know, ultimately the difference in the result of the game. Going to the second map, we knew we had to make sure that everyone was staying calm and collected and not worried about Haven anymore. We knew we made mistakes. It was up to us to clean those mistakes and see the series out.

THESPIKE.GG: What do you think, what are your thoughts on the matchup against LOUD? Considering all of the previous matchups against them, how ready do you guys feel against them?

ethos: There’s this general just excitement around the entire team due to the long-standing rivalry between the Optic core and LOUD, which as you might remember, is fueled by LOUD having only lost a handful of series and most of those series being to the Optic core. We love playing against them. We know that this, that whenever we play them, that'll be the highest caliber of VALORANT that will be played. It's fun.

We love everyone on that team as well. They're all great people. So, for us going to this next match, we are just excited to have another chance at LOUD, another BO5. We did face them earlier this season, beating them 2-0, but they also knocked us out in Brazil. Right now, the score is tied 1-1, in terms of series since the start of the franchise league. There's no better stage for us to settle the score and the grand finals to become the first Americas champions. We're playing against our old rivals, and this would ultimately solidify who's looking more solid going to Tokyo?

Make sure to check out our VCT 2023 Hub for all the information about the VALORANT events this year.

Featured image courtesy of Riot Games.