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VCT Pacific League kicked off on March 25, 2023. After six weeks of intense competition, the leaderboard looks more or less like what most viewers expected, with some surprising exceptions. Team Secret and ZETA DIVISION, both teams that are seated in the middle of the table, faced off against each other in the sixth week of the tournament.
The series started with ZETA grabbing a victory on Split, but Team Secret managed to equalize on Lotus and took the match to Fracture, where the two teams fought tooth and neck for a long time before the Japanese side ran away with the map and the series.
After the match, Abhipsito Das of Sportskeeda Esports got the chance to speak to Team Secret's Adrian "invy" Reyes in an exclusive one-on-one interview. During the conversation, the young athlete opened up about his teammates, his side's prospects going forward in VCT Pacific League, and more.
TS invy talks about match against ZETA DIVISION in Week 6 of VCT 2023: Pacific League
Q. You have Jessievash and Dubstep as your teammates, who are two of the most experienced players in VCT Pacific League. As a young player yourself, what are some of the most important things that you have learned from them?
invy: I have learned a lot from them. I have tried to adapt to how they play and make it part of my playstyle so that I can become unpredictable. They also help me keep calm during the match and outside.
Q. Unlike the other Initiators, like KAY/O and Fade, Gekko has a much lower pick rate upon release. As a player who primarily plays Initiators, what is your opinion on the current state of the Agent?
invy: Gekko is not that good for pro-play at the moment. It is very easy to counter. If you pick Gekko in pro-play, you have to support the Gekko and play around the Agent, which is one of the cons of the Agent. I don’t think it is that good at the moment.
Q. How do you feel about your individual as well as your team’s performance in today’s match?
invy: Individually, I could have done a lot better, sometimes forgetting how to play for myself. But that happens. I think as a team, we made minor mistakes that cost the game. We could have won the match, but we kept making minor mistakes individually.
Q. What are some of your takeaways from today’s VCT Pacific League series?
invy: My takeaways from the match would be that our comms need to be more organized. Everyone was coming but things were quite messy, and we were not listening properly because everyone was talking over each other.
Sometimes, we also kept forgetting some of the protocols that we made. Such rounds cost us the game.
Q. What advantage does your Split composition for today's VCT Pacific League match give you over the previous one?
invy: We decided to change the comp because our last comp was very dependent on how we played. But then again, we made minor mistakes and individually, we couldn’t hit our shots.
Q. What are some of the advantages you get from picking Jett on Lotus over Raze?
invy: We wanted to play to our strengths. Dubstep’s Jett is very good, and Op-ing on the map is very important. It helps garner map control, so yeah.
Q. Bind is back in the map pool, and Icebox is out. As one of the few teams who like to play Icebox in VCT Pacific, how do you feel about this upcoming change?
invy: Icebox used to be one of our favorite maps to play very comfortably. With it going out of the map pool, it kind of hurts us a little bit. We are trying to improve our other maps, so our map pool is still quite strong.
Q. Was there anything about ZETA’s playstyle today that threw you off? If yes, can you tell me what they were?
invy: I think they are very slow. Especially on Split. Because of their slowness, we got picked whenever we pushed out.
Q. Of the three matches you are yet to play in VCT Pacific, which one are you looking forward to the most?
invy: I would say the match against DRX. They are the best team in Asia right now, so going up against them and beating them will surely boost our confidence.
