EliGE: "We have it in us to win this Major"

After stumbling twice in qualification matches during Stage Two of the BLAST.tv Austin Major, FaZe have finally secured a Stage Three berth with a win over MIBR today. The Bo3 series saw FaZe really struggle but ultimately come out ahead of their Brazilian opponents in part because of a great performance from Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski on Ancient.

Following this win, he spoke to Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about the win, the overall strength of teams in Stage Two, Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev's form, and the team's refreshed mindset heading into Stage Three.

Last minute series to make Stage Three, how are you feeling finally locking in Stage Three at the Major?

It's definitely a lot of relief. It was a little dicey on the second map but we were able to close it out with a really nice comeback, really close rounds. I'm just happy that we displayed what we could, I think we have it in us to win this Major if we take it step by step and this is what we can do.

Before this match we saw s1mple say MIBR was "screwed" against FaZe. Does that reflect the team's confidence before the match?

Yeah we were definitely confident. We don't think anything of MIBR beating Falcons because it's us now. We can beat anyone and we just had to talk after the game [yesterday] and see how we were feeling and try to relax and not think too hard about it.

If we just play the game and do what we need to and not overthink we're gonna win the game.

How do you rate MIBR's performance? Do you think them beating Falcons and playing FaZe well reflects more poorly Falcons or is to their benefit?

No I mean MIBR played well. I'm more saying that it's two different matchups, right? MIBR versus Falcons is a whole different dynamic and what they have to account for with their game plan and the map pool.

I just think there's so many variables that are different and it's not transitive. It doesn't mean we're going to lose to them because of that. Overall I think that they showed a good form this Major but unfortunately only one of us can make it out of Stage Two, but they put on a good performance beating Falcons especially as they were considered one of the favorites for the Major.

This stage ended up being a bloodbath with Falcons and HEROIC being knocked out. Do you think that speaks to the level of teams in this stage?

I definitely think everyone is playing pretty good. Legacy when they were playing against us were playing really well after having a hard Stage One. They came into Stage Two and just won 3-0 and played well against us.

Obviously we didn't play as well as we could have but I give flowers to Legacy and everyone is playing very well right now.

Another part of it is the format of course, Falcons having to battle through the gauntlet for every single match puts a lot of pressure on their shoulders and everyone feels pressure no matter how many years you have been playing.

It's always going to be there at events with these kinds of stakes when the tournament is this important things can happen.

We saw s1mple have a mixed performance in this stage, do you think his level is trending upwards and he'll be ready for Stage Three?

I'd say yeah for sure. In the series where he didn't play as well yesterday [against 3DMAX] he didn't really get a chance to shoot his AWP. You saw what he can do in the HEROIC game when he's hitting those insane flicks.

He's the s1mple that everyone knows and he looks like that, but we also have to be in good positions for him to show up. Being an AWPer means you're also a closer, that's just the situation you're in a lot of the time and if we're struggling to put him in those good positions then it's going to be harder.

Overall Sasha has been improving day by day, week by week, and I've seen it in the scrims and in the matches and I think you can only expect more.

Heading into Stage Three how are you feeling about starting this process all over again? Could we see a quicker run to the playoffs this time?

Maybe? it's going to be nice to get a refresh after finishing this stage. We were talking last night that it's going to be a complete start from ground zero now.

Anything that happened in this Stage doesn't matter at all and we have to grind Stage Three from the very beginning and maybe we're stronger in the Bo1s, I don't know. We started off 2-0 so yeah we're going to take it game by game and try to keep everything on a clean slate because the last two days weren't as good while today was really strong.

We just have to keep on moving forward.