After his team managed to pick up their second win of the tournament, taking down North Academy, we talked to NOREG's Morten "zEVES" Vollan about the team, young, hungry players and the tournament here.

NOREG did just enough to get through the groups at WESG, beating Endpoint and North Academy to place above the two teams and finish third overall in group B.

Inexperience almost cost NOREG on Train, zEVES says

After the match against North Academy, and before it was certain if the Norwegian team would move on, we talked to Morten "⁠zEVES⁠" Vollan Christensen who had a lot of praise for his young teammate Ole "⁠Marcelious⁠" Kristian Langan.

Coming here with this squad, what was the thinking like, what were you expecting from yourselves at WESG, considering the group you were put in?

I think we all expected to go through the group, there are some hard teams here, like Ukraine and GODSENT, but GODSENT ended up removing two players and adding hampus and pyth and North Academy has been playing really well in the past couple of months. We knew it would be hard but we are in a spot where we have a really good chance to go through.

Have you been practicing, preparing as a team, or is it more of a puggy style that you are playing here?

It's more like a puggy style, we went through 2-3 days of full practice. After that, it was mainly just coming here, me and RUBINO working together with what we know and call some different things. But yeah, we are playing like a mix, we have some great individual players, some young talents that are really hungry to show themselves on this kind of a stage. We have the motivation, we have the drive that we need and hopefully we go through.

You mentioned young, hungry players, Marcelious is someone we named as a player to watch at this tournament and he showed up pretty well in the first game in particular. Tell me a bit about him, where did he come from?

I don't really know where he came from. I think that it's just the past six months that he shined in the Norwegian scene, and in Norway, we need an AWPer. Norway really hasn't had a strong AWPer since maybe Polly back in LGB, that is actually what we've been missing for a while. For him to come through as a strong AWPer is really good for us. That was the main reason why we picked him here, because we need an AWPer that is hungry, that wants to show himself.

And I think he's done that, it's hard coming here as a mix, if we'd come here as a team that prepared for months, I think it would've been better, but I think, not taking the GODSENT match into consideration, that we did good enough here.

Tell me about the matches, it started with the Endpoint game where you were behind, but you managed to claw back and get that win. How did the game go from your perspective?

We started off well, I believe we won the pistol as CT, but then they won the first weapon round. After that, we didn't manage to come back on CT as much as we wanted to because they were impressive on Inferno, the strong side for us was usually the CT side on that map. But they found a way to pick us off, one by one, and surprising us with some contact plays and that made the economy for us really, really bad. We won the pistol round and then just built on the momentum from there. They played really well, I was really surprised because I think the most of the teams and the players here didn't expect them to do as well as they did. They brought GODSENT to 14-16, they crushed North Academy, I think they have done pretty well. We were actually surprised that they shut us down as they did, we didn't expect that.

To touch on the last game you had here, against North Academy. You had a big lead, it seemed like it was going to be an easy shutdown, but in the end, they clawed back and almost made a comeback. What were the issues in closing down North Academy on Train?

I think right there it showed that we have some really inexperienced players on our team. When you have that big of a lead you just play smart and play together and we will win. We had the CT side, we should just build on our strengths, play crossfires, use our communication. It would be easier, but we kept doing stupid mistakes, people think "Ah, we are up 14-4" and then we get an entry, but they still go aggressive to get another kill. We didn't really communicate enough on the different bombsites. We overrotated when they faked us, even though I would say that we shouldn't overrotate, that it might be a fake, people still overrated because they are in their zone.

When they don't have the experience it is hard for me and RUBINO, even though we have some experience with cromen, it's hard to show them the way. When they are in the zone, even though you are saying things, it's still hard for them to listen and understand what you are saying.

You were supposed to play with jkaem at this event, but he ended up pulling out a few weeks ago, I think. What is behind that, is it just jkaem not wanting to play anymore?

We decided to play with radifaction instead of jkaem because he has motivational problems right now and he basically he hadn't play CS for like a week or two at all. I talked to him, it didn't feel like he is motivated enough to come here with us, so that was one of the reasons for us to pick another player. I would love to have jkaem here, as a motivated player he is a top3 player in Norway, he is insanely good. But when he doesn't have the motivation, he can drag the whole team down with his mentality.

That was the reason, and we also got the opportunity then to bring another Norwegian young player to some into a team, like radifaction, and show himself on a bigger scene than the Norwegian one. I also think he's been doing great. Probably a bit nervous, I think all of us are, but I think we are still doing well.