A day after admitting his level was “not good enough”, the Falcons captain bounced back against NIP and joked that the secret was swapping mice with NiKo.
karrigan looked like a different player on Wednesday. A day after telling Hotspawn that he knew his level was “not good enough”, the Falcons in-game leader finished the 2-0 win over Ninjas in Pyjamas with a 1.20 rating, second only to m0NESY on the server.
That is a big step up from ESL Pro League Season 24, where he ended the event with a 0.69 rating, the third-lowest of the 80 players there. Asked about his form on Thunderpick’s broadcast after the match, karrigan started with a joke.
I just changed NiKo’s mouse with mine before we traveled here, and it worked really good.
“Today was a good day”
Before the match, karrigan had said he wanted to play more freely and enjoy the game. Afterwards, he said that is exactly what happened.
I mean, today was a great example of me resetting, and I just follow my instinct, even overpeek sometimes. I didn’t really think about it. I just played the game, as I have done for many years, and today was a good day.
He was careful not to read too much into one match. “Maybe tomorrow is not the same, who knows, but I just want to keep that mental fortitude as a player, as an individual,” he said, adding that “when I have games like this, obviously Counter-Strike gets a lot more fun for me.”
Ancient is still a project
Falcons won Dust2 13-6 without much trouble, but needed overtime to close out Ancient 16-13 after leading 8-4. karrigan took some of the blame.
There’s still some work in progress for Ancient. I think we had some mid-round decent situations as T, but we didn’t really connect. I think I could have done a slightly better job there to direct the team.
He also pointed to a lost anti-force round as the moment NIP got back into the map. “It could have been an easier Ancient if you don’t lose the anti-force,” he said.
9z next
Falcons now face 9z in the Group A winners’ match on Thursday at 13:00 CEST, with a semi-final spot for the winner. 9z were the surprise of day one, beating Aurora 2-0 and finishing the series 13-1 on Nuke.
On paper, yeah, but I think 9z is always a dangerous team. I think they are really great, or they have a poor performance, and they showed up 2-0 Aurora, who has played great lately.
karrigan expects a lot of direct duels in the match. “They’re playing very confident here, so we’re going to get a lot of duels and a lot of heads-up direct play,” he said. “I’m looking forward to a game tomorrow, and hopefully my mouse works like today.”
