nitr0: "XotiC is actually incredible at the game. He understands the game at a high level"

NRG have become one of the biggest talking points in NA CS after the organization reformed their roster with Zechrie "XotiC" Elshani and Carson "nosraC" O'Reilly, two players that never played at the top level.

The team is debuting their new roster at Fragadelphia 19, and Nick "nitr0" Cannella talked to Dust2.us' Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about why NRG signed XotiC and nosraC, the importance of attending a LAN this soon, and whether he feels this new NRG lineup can take them to the next level.

The complete interview is available below on, YouTube and we also provided a full transcription underneath. All questions and answers have been slightly edited for clarity and length.

I'm here with nitr0 from NRG following the squad locking in Stage Two. You had pretty easy games, and a little bit of a longer game there to start with NuTorious, but nothing too serious. Any thoughts coming into Stage Two?

Not really. We just need to keep focusing on our own game and talking about the games and stuff, and like how we want to approach it. There aren't that many intricacies, just mainly focusing on ourselves because we don't know a lot of the opponents here, and we don't scrim that many other teams here. We scrimmed the guys we played today, actually, but we are just focused on ourselves.

XotiC, especially, is like new to competitive. I mean, not new, but he's coming back and we're teaching him all these things and stuff. So, at the end of the day, it's not like if we were to prep against any of these teams that would really matter, because we just need to keep focusing on ourselves.

The storyline with XotiC and nosraC is that they have been sort of called up. nosraC was a journeyman player in NA, and XotiC took an extended break from competition. How did NRG come up with this decision? It came completely out of left field for a lot of people to pick up these two players.

Well, obviously Jeorge and nosraC know XotiC for a long time, they're really close and stuff like that. So, that's how it initially came up. And, obviously, XotiC has been pugging a lot and grinding the game. He wasn't really, like, necessarily looking to come back into competition because of his job and all that stuff, but I think everyone has started talking to him, we liked him a lot, and it just kind of came to fruition.

And, I mean, he's actually incredible at the game. I played against him in 2016 when he was on Splyce, and I think even CLG Academy. So, you know, he's been around. He understands the game at a high level. It's just more about understanding the current meta, which I, obviously, have experience with coming from VALORANT.

So, I can help a lot in that aspect of him coming back. And then, also just kind of like the more nuanced stuff of learning grenades. In terms of reactions, protocols, like all those things, he already understands that. It's just a matter of how we want to do it as a team, and more of the micro sense of it.

XotiC, as a player really hasn't done a whole lot in his career. He's been around since 2015, 2016, and even played with DAVEY when he was still a pro. But, for various reasons, he's taken multiple breaks from competition, and he was adverse to traveling for a long time. Were there any reassurances that he had to offer you or the NRG management?

There's no, like, ambiguity in the sense of him loving the game, and having that passion for it. It was more of just he's at a certain point in his life that he built a career outside of esports, and it's just a matter of whether can he either juggle both, or choose one, or the other. It's more of like a mature decision because he doesn't have that long of a career in CS because he took so many breaks.

So, it was more of a real-life decision, I guess, and if he would be willing to be sacrificial for certain things over the other, and ultimately he made the decision.

It sounds like he's doing two jobs at once. He's doing this esports job and this professional job. For NRG, the goal is obviously to qualify for the Major and big events, and spend a lot of time abroad, hopefully. Do you think he's ready to kind of put the other stuff behind him, if NRG does climb in the VRS ranking, and perhaps go to tier-one play?

Well, obviously, if we start traveling a lot and all that stuff, it would be a bigger conversation to have. Even I, when I was younger and EliGE as well, we were trying to balance school before esports was as big as it became. No one knew it was going to become as big as it became. Like, in 2015, 2016, we were still trying to pursue degrees. It wasn't projected to be as big as it was supposed to be.

So, that's a conversation that would definitely have down the road. I think right now we're just trying to slowly take it step by step and not rush into things. That's pretty much where we're at right now.

We've always talked about how important it is for NA players to get LAN experience, but perhaps even more so for him, because this is in fact his first LAN after so many years. Was that a big consideration to go to FRAG, to get him to take off the training wheels, go to Canada, play a FRAG, play against NA teams before, perhaps, needing to go to Europe for a BLAST or anything like that?

Yeah, for sure. It's obviously good to come into a smaller kind of LAN. There are a lot of people here from online, so it's definitely nice to go to a smaller kind of event as opposed to going to Dallas or a Major. Especially since he's a bit older now, he's 24, and he's definitely more mature than he was when he was on Splyce and CLG Academy.

So, I think that also has a big effect on it in terms of, like, nerves and just understanding the social part of things. This is definitely a really good event to just start out, in my opinion. Definitely having a lot of people he knows here to just talk to, and that he talked to online over the years. So, yeah, it's been good so far.

Now, focusing on nosraC, I wanted to pick your brain on what qualities you think he brings to this team. Obviously, for better or worse, the conversation has been so focused on XotiC. nosraC's been in the trenches for a long time. What were the key aspects that he brings to the table that intrigued you to bring him into the squad?

I think he's been IGLing for like a year and a half or so. So, it's a lot of him having a big voice and also having a different approach to the game because his understanding of the game is a bit different. His experience is kind of limited to NA instead of Europe, so there are some things to teach him for sure, but also him just being a second voice on the team is really important.

And, obviously, he's super fearless, he'll just run in and be like super selfless for us and sacrificial. He definitely has a lot of great qualities as a player, and he has a pretty big personality, so that's nice for us as well. So, having the camaraderie of five people in the team is very important, especially nowadays in CS and considering how much you're together.

It's been great having him, and obviously, having someone who knows a lot of grenades, because when you're the IGL, you have to know a lot of nades and stuff. It's a bunch of little things that just make him a good player to have on the team.

Looking towards stage two, I think it's kind of where the competition really begins for a team like NRG. You're going to potentially be facing off against European teams, or some of the Brazilians here, and potentially even another top NA team. How are you feeling about that as the first real trial by fire for this new energy roster?

Like I said, it's a good event. We're not facing freaking Falcons and Vitality. So it's definitely good to kind of, especially since it is on LAN, to have that kind of kickstart for two new guys. And, as a team, losing 40% of the team is no joke. There's a lot to go over, we could talk about Counter-Strike literally all day and still not be confident in, you know, like some maps here and there.

We're just trying to really just figure out like, what the best approach has been, to make sure we have success in the short term and in terms of building our foundation on both T and CT sides and adding which strats would be more like simplistic.

But, also at the same time, be a bit minimalistic in our approach to the game, so it's easier to remember things, because if you don't have structure, it's going to be very chaotic, especially with people who haven't been playing together for, you know, long at all. It's been a grind for sure, but I'm happy with where we are right now.

After dropping out of the Major, I believe we asked you or HLTV asked you, like what comes next, and you weren't really sure of what NRG needed to do to kind of come out of that rot of Dallas and Austin. Do you think this gamble is kind of the way forward for this team? Do you think this could be the one that kind of allows NRG to finally break through?

I mean, there's no telling because at the end of the day, there are a lot of question marks with us still. We don't really know how XotiC is going to be in two months. He could be the best player in the world, or he could be, you know, not where he wants to be, for example, and also nosraC.

So, we're again just trying to take it match by match and just really trying to make sure we feel the progression as a team and just keep having the conversations, whether it's tough or not, to keep moving forward. And, as long as we're feeling the progression as a team, then and we don't stalemate, then we should eventually get to where we want to be.