Evil Geniuses has made a strong start in the Lock-In Series of the 2021 Legends League Championship with a comeback against Cloud9 and Immortals. EG didn’t care about the hype of the new C9 midfielder Luka “Perkz” (listen) Perković, winning in a bloody brawl before eliminating the Immortals team so much with visa issues that only two of the their LCS beginners in the country right now.
After IMT’s release, midfielder Evie Geniuses Daniele “Jiizuke” Di Mauro spoke to Nick Geracie at Inven Global about the team’s new build, his sudden look from the starting roster at the 2020 LCS Summer Split , and the current visa issues affecting EG coaches that the team had to overcome in early 2021.
How does it feel to start Lock 20S LCS In 2-0?
It’s cool, and I think a strong early start is good for our team’s mental fortunes.
This is your second year on Evil Geniuses, but this season, your coaching staff look very different. What is it like working with Peter Dun and who compares to last season?
Our teachers are not here yet, in fact. Both Peter Dun and Gabriel “Turtle” Piexoto are getting visa issues, so for now we only have Connor “Artemis” Doyle and Brandon “Mash” Phan as our own coaching staff. Peter Dun and Turtle are still working with the team remotely, but it’s not the same as being around them. What we are doing now is working, so once they arrive, it will be even better.
That makes the start of the team even more impressive. Alone, you had a good game on Zoe today outside of the death of one ‘whoopsie’ to the tower. How did you shake that up to keep pushing forward against the Immortals?
I go for the plays that I believe I can do. If I think there is something I can do, I will do it. I don’t care if it’s a perfect game or not. * laughs * I’m just sticking to my thought process. So for me, he was basically laughing at me. I was like, “Oh … inted. ****.” * laugh * I shook it off.
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That’s the right mindset to have, especially when your team was as far ahead as you were at that point in the game. Since visa issues have affected other teams, I wanted to ask how long did your team have to use before the LCS Lock-In started?
Our players did not have any visa issues like our tutors, so we have been working together for just two weeks now. Starting this week, we started to shine in terms of playing together as a team. It feels good because I feel like this time around, Evil Geniuses is definitely the team that plays together.
Once Evil Geniuses signed midfielder Greyson “Goldenglue” Gilmer and top boss Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon before the start of the LCS Summer Split 2020 it was expected that the team would blast them as options to let you still start, but then you never started for the team again for the rest of the season. Can you explain how the roster decisions were made last summer?
Well, the team decided to play with Huni and our starting AD Carry Bae “Bang” Jun-sik, and there you have it. I don’t live there, so EG Goldenglue had to start in my place to let Huni start. I don’t like to see myself as someone who has caught up with Goldenglue. In my opinion, it’s more that I was captured by Huni.
The way Evil Geniuses wanted to play last year was different from what I wanted. The coaches at the time had a different view of the game than I did, and although they promised to get us back to the path I wanted to play, we never did.
It was sad because I think Huni and I playing together on the same roster would have been cowardly. It would have been similar to the way I played with Lucas “Cabochard” Simon-Meslet on Team Energy. We would play aggressively and play towards diving the top tier, which is basically what we are doing right now on EG.
Eong-young Jeong “Influence” plays Renekton and stuff like that, and this kind of style of play could be something the team did last year with me and Huni, easily. Instead, the team wanted to play safe.
This is definitely a better style for you, but the team as a whole looks very good so far. We haven’t seen Victory play this strong side series since joining Team Liquid in 2018. Would you say that EG’s new offensive identity is due to the individual players or is it because of the team’s cultivation as a whole?
I think it’s the players, for sure. We have different players this year with different mindsets. I think there was an important change coming this year, especially the impact of Impact and Peter Dun allowing plays like this to happen. If we did something unusual last year, we wouldn’t just do it again or go for the safe play instead.
For example, if I could kill the middle blade in front of him, my coach would tell me, “Why don’t you push the wave and move, so then your opponent can do nothing?” To me, it was like, ‘Why can’t I kill this guy on my own, get 20 CS, and then go away?’ I can do both at the same time, but we always wanted safe play.
If I had to explain my style of play, it would be like we used to play in Team Energy. We would aim to not let the enemy team play their game. We wouldn’t let our opponents breathe, and that’s what teams in the Professional League of Legends do as well. I think this is the best way to play the game.
All the hype surrounding Lock In LC 2021 opening day focused exclusively on Perkz making his North American debut, but it was Evil Geniuses who eliminated Q9. What were you thinking of playing against Perkz for the first time since the two of you played in Europe, and what was EG ‘s plan coming into the game against Q9
I’m not worried about laning against Perkz. I’m pretty confident in my laning level against him, but Perkz’s strength is the way he communicates with the jungler and his support.
From what I can remember in 2018, the difference between Perkz and Rasmus “Caps” Winther is that Caps would compete with your series to create mobile opportunities, where Perkz outperformed using the jungler and his support. Then there was Erlend “Nukeduck” Våtevik Holm who does both but not really good. He was still a threat because he knew both of them very well.
When I was playing against Perkz now, I was fine because I’ve learned a lot since we last played each other, but you could see how well Perkz coordinated with the jungler and his support. We could top CS, but if I had communicated better I would have been much more active than I was. Perkz is better than I have been at communicating with the jungler and his support, which is something I need to learn.
I appreciate your perspective. We’re only two days into the LCS Lock In, but who would you say is likely to be your biggest rival for the Group B summit?
It’s definitely Cloud9. We didn’t scrum against FlyQuest so I’m not sure what to expect from them, so we’ll see when we play them next week. It should be Q9, but it ‘s also the start of the year. Most teams have only had two or three weeks of practice, and it’s still early in the season, so no one should be counted.
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