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Week 4, Day 2 of VCT 2023: Pacific League saw two intense matches. The first one was between Korea's T1 and Gen.G, and the second involved Japan's ZETA DIVISION and DetonatioN FocusMe. Gen.G emerged victorious with a score of 2-0, and ZETA DIVISION secured their win with a score of 2-0 as well.
After the first April 16 match was over, Rishabh Kaltia from Sportskeeda esports got the opportunity to interview Ha "Sayaplayer" Jung-woo, who is a professional Valorant player from South Korea and is currently a member of T1. The gamer is the primary Duelist for the team. During the interview, the athlete talked about their upcoming opponents, his favorite pastime activities, and more.
T1 Sayaplayer talks about his team's lackluster performance in VCT 2023: Pacific League, his warm-up routine, and more
Q. What do you think of your individual and team’s performance today?
Sayaplayer: So, overall, it was really disappointing that the team lost, and we didn't play as well as we thought. We didn't adapt to the plays that we had during the scrims, and we hope to improve on the mistakes that we made today and come back stronger.
Q. Did Gen.G deploy any strategies or plays that might have caught you and your team off-guard today?
Sayaplayer: We kind of expected the plays for Haven, but we didn't play well when we were on the Attack side. As for Ascent, there were a lot of passive plays that I feel we weren't really ready for.
Q. Ascent was your map pick, and despite this, you guys lost 13-5 on the map. What might have caused this? Do you believe the passive plays from Gen.G, as you mentioned right now, might have been one of the causes?
Sayaplayer: I really don't feel that is the main reason, but we didn't play as well as we did when we had practices. It is kind of disappointing because it didn't show through today's play.
Q. If you had to point out three areas where you believe the team needs to work more on, what would they be?
Sayaplayer: So the biggest thing is to bring in the communication and the vibes that we have during our scrims into our game matches. I think another thing is to have that really good team vibration on game days.
[By team vibration, did you team synergy?]
Kind of like that, the team atmosphere as a whole.
Q. I just interviewed TS from Gen.G. He said that he was surprised by the fact that T1 played like they were scared. Is this true?
Sayaplayer: That wasn't the thing at all. We weren't afraid, and as you saw, in Ascent, I was in the front and even for Haven as well.
Q. According to you, which team in the Pacific League is the most underrated and why?
Sayaplayer: I think if I have to pick a team at this point in this stage, it will probably be us because of how our performance is, and hopefully, we are able to break through our underdog image.
Q. Being a Duelist main, your aim needs to be sharp and on point all the time. Having said that, can you tell us about your warm-up routine before every match?
Sayaplayer: So before the match, what I do is wake up two hours earlier, and then I would practice on the Range, and when we come to the stadium, we also have our practice scrims with the teams.
Q. Which Duelist do you think is the most difficult to play with and why?
Sayaplayer: So there's a Duelist Agent called Yoru, and even the players who play the Agent the most — they have a difficult time playing him because of the mechanisms.
Q. When you are not playing Valorant, what do you like to do in your free time?
Sayaplayer: I would have some drinks with my friends, and I like to go driving, but NOT in that order [laughs].
Q. You will be playing against RRQ next, and they have been in exceptional form recently. What do you think of them?
Sayaplayer: I saw their match today, and it showed that they have improved a lot. We will make sure that we won't take the match in an easy way, and we will make sure that we put our best in the next match.
T1 will next face Rex Regum Qeon in VCT 2023: Pacific League. The upcoming match is set to go live on April 23, 2023.
