Spinx after his incredible match vs. Spirit: "Whoever we face, I can shoot well"

The first quarterfinal match of the BLAST.tv Austin Major saw MOUZ take down defending Major champion Spirit in a scintillating three-map series. Lotan "Spinx" Giladi toe-to-toe with Spirit's young superstar, Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, and managed to come out on top.

Spinx spoke with Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore following his first Major playoff victory with MOUZ. The Israeli rifler commented on the series v. Spirit, his individual level on stage, and Ludvig "Brollan" Brolin's composure.

All questions and answers were slightly edited for clarity.

An insane series from start to finish, quadruple overtime on Mirage, insane games on Dust2 and Nuke. How are you feeling coming out of that series against Spirit?

I'm super happy. It was a really hard series. Just happy we managed to win, it wasn't easy at all. A lot of back and forth during the game. We managed to stay in it, and I'm super happy we won.

Speaking of that back and forth, I think it's really summarized in that opening Mirage game where it was really back and forth. Four overtimes is insane for a Major playoffs game and had to go into Dust2 trailing. How did the team mentally recover from losing so many map points on Mirage?

First of all, Mirage was really hard. A lot of 2v1s, 3v1s, 1v1s; we could have done better. On Dust2, we just said that a lot of games during this tournament weren't supposed to go our way, but they did, especially on Mirage against Liquid. This time it didn't, it went the other way. But we are still in the game, we can still change the result. If you win 2-1, it doesn't matter if we won Mirage or not, so we just focused on the next two maps.

Incredible performance for you to start your first playoffs match with MOUZ. A lot of clutches from you, a lot of multikills; probably wouldn't have won without your individual contribution. You really came alive on stage. How are you feeling about your performance on an individual level against a strong team like Spirit?

I'm confident in my individual play on stage or arena, whatever. Whoever we face, I can shoot well, I can play well. Of course, I have a good team to help me do it.

On Nuke, unfortunately, we saw a really slow performance from Brollan. I think he ended the game with four kills and at one point was 0-13. How do you keep a teammate like that motivated and encouraged when he's having such a rough individual performance? How is the team able to keep his mental state intact?

I think Brollan did a good job on the mental side. I remember there was a moment on the CT side where we tried to hype him up or help him a bit. He just said, "All good, don't worry about me, I'll be fine. Focus on your crosshair, guys. You kill them, and everything is fine." It just felt like he didn't care about his scoreline. He didn't care if he was 0-12 like you said or whatever. He was focused on the win and how he could help us get it.

Taking down the reigning Major champions in Spirit, does this give you more confidence coming into your semifinals, where you may have to face Vitality, who are the best team in the world right now?

Yeah, of course, Spirit is not an easy team to defeat. They're really good; they have a lot of good individuals. I'm just happy we managed to get it done.