"To blow a 2-0 lead like they did? That's just choke city": Team Liquid's coach Elamite on the Allegiance sweep

The first day of the Halo World Championship 2016 has had it’s fair share of highlights and upsets, and the most recent one was Team Liquid sweeping Team Allegiance. We got to chat with Team Liquid’s coach Elamite right after the series to get his thoughts, and here is what he said:

ESL: Elamite, what was the difference between this series and the last time you played Allegiance?
Elamite: Well, the last time we met up with Allegiance, it was a 3-1 series in their favor at the X Games, but X Games was one of our poorest performances that I’ve ever seen. I did not get the chance to coach the guys at that event, and I was just really disappointed with how each of them played individually. Going through HaloWC: Columbus and leading up to the HaloWC, we’ve known exactly what we needed to do and we knew exactly what game types we needed to practice against Allegiance. We have been looking forward to this series for weeks now, and we did exactly what we needed to do.

ESL: So you felt good heading into this series?
Elamite: Absolutely. Allegiance is a great team, but we know exactly what we are capable of and we knew we were capable of beating them.

ESL: Tell me a little bit about what was going on during the series. You guys got a big win Game 1, and were playing really well. Was there any point within the series where you realized “We are going to sweep these guys”?
Elamite: After the first game and leading into the second game when we got a strong start on The Rig Slayer is when I started to realize, yeah, we can sweep them. I didn’t want to look over any of the game types but going off of the first Coliseum Capture The Flag, we started off very poorly. They got an early cap, then actually threw the flag all the way across top center to get the second cap. To blow a 2-0 lead like they did? That’s just choke city. 

ESL: You’re done for the day. You get to hang out and watch the games for the rest of the afternoon and get ready for tomorrow. What are you telling your team in preparation for the biggest bracket of your lives?
Elamite: We just need to keep doing what we have been doing here. We practiced almost every single day. We knew we had Allegiance, which is why we were so prepared here, but evey day we practiced in order to beat anybody. You’ve got to beat everyone to win the event and that’s where our goals are focused. Tonight we are going to reiterate the things that we have been doing the whole time: make sure our fundamentals are down and come out and bring our A game.

ESL: Is there anyone that you really want to play? Really not want to play in the first round?
Elamite: As far as not wanting to play, the only team I can think of is CLG. I respect that team a lot, I think they are the best team right now. As far as teams I want to play? Evil Geniuses. I love playing against them, our whole team does. I’ve teamed with Lunchbox, Roy, and Snip3down in the past. It’s just a huge grudge match. Don’t get me wrong, we are all best friends, but as far as in-game? Oh, we love going against each other. Huge grudge match. 

ESL: Thank you for your time.

Check out how Team Liquid does for the rest of the #HaloWC by following along on Facebook and Twitter!

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