esports
Caedrel explains the difficulties of losing to G2 and SK and how Excel prepare to bounce back next weekend.
No one expected a team like Excel to be able to beat G2, the current EU super team, especially with their relatively inexperienced roster. But no one wanted to prove everyone wrong more than Excel's jungler Marc 'Caedrel' Lamont.
When we caught up with Caedrel last week, he was full of excitement ahead of their match against G2. Excel exceeded their expectations when the two sides took the stage, with fans labelling the match 'game of the tournament' and Caedrel was right at the heart of the underdogs' campaign to take down the EU Super Villains.
But G2 showed their class and experience in the form of their new mid-laner Caps, and Excel weren't quite able to hang on. They went on to lose to SK Gaming, too, as the plucky British team hit an all-time low.
In the latest of our weekly Excel at the LEC column, Caedrel opens up about how difficult it was to lose to G2 and SK and why next weekend could be the most important weekend of his LEC career.
Oh the G2 game, what a disaster. It’s been a rough weekend for me.
Here’s what I make of what happened against G2. Our draft was good which meant we got a lot of free kills, especially since Mikyx was mispositioning a lot so I just kept punishing him for it. We were also making plays on bot lane as well, while having Rakan, Galio and Nocturne meant our engage was strong so every time we got the right engage, we won the team fights.
But G2’s macro was really good and you could tell throughout the game that they were thinking more and more about how to stop us and the longer the game went on, the harder it felt to actually get a good engage because they changed the way they were positioning.
It just got harder and harder. We had a really bad team fight on our red buff where we didn’t realise that Caps was flanking and then luckily we stole Baron straight after. But boy it did not get better from there. It came down to the Elder Dragon and I have since watched the replays to see what happened.
I was about to smite Elder and Jankos flash smited but instead of smiting the dragon, he smited me for some reason so when I then smited the dragon after, it didn’t die. I was mind-blown at the time. Perkz then got the drake and they slowed down the game a lot which led to that last team fight in our base which we lost.
I felt like it was my fault again
This loss was really hard to take. It was bad and I was obviously extremely sad.
When the game ended, I really thought I solo lost the game for the team on that last fight but now, having watched the replays like ten times, I guess I could have played better but I think there were a few missteps and mispositioning from the whole team in general. We shouldn’t have taken that fight in the first place and I just felt so bad because I could have done more.
I just felt really emotional after this game because we should have won, you know? This loss was really hard to take. It was bad and I was obviously extremely sad.
It’s been really up and down this weekend, it’s been quite hard to deal with everything but we’re coming together, having discussions and the team is still getting along very well. We’re taking the losses as a team rather than individually.
There were positives
It was also kind of nice to give the super team of EU a run for their money.
People said it was impressive that we managed to take G2 past 40 minutes but what they don’t know is that it was actually one of the problems we had. As a team, we have never been past 35 minutes, not even in scrims, ever! Basically all our games ended in 30 minutes, so when the clock hit 40, we knew we were in for a treat because we essentially had no clue what we were doing.
Individually we had a generic idea of what we wanted to do but as a team, we weren’t as coordinated as we should have been. We hadn’t really practiced our late games very much so it was tough.
It was a good showing though. I think we definitely had the capability to win this game and we should have won it, but it was also kind of nice to give the super team of EU a run for their money.
Caps is OP
Caps is crazy, his Akali was on another level. We could never kill him and he was always turning fights in G2’s favour by just flanking somehow or just randomly killing one of us or escaping and dodging all of our ultimates. He had so much pressure on the map as well, his Akali was perfect. Playing against Caps really is as difficult as it looks.
The fights got really complicated and Caps was just too strong.
But I wouldn’t say that Caps necessarily outperformed Excel. Of course, at times he pretty much 1v9ed but there was not much we could do to shut him down. We had this dive comp mapped out where Galio, Nocturne and Rakan were going to dive on the Draven and Morgana which means we were forced to leave Jeskla to try and survive against Caps somehow. We tried to change our strategy a bit when we realised Caps was literally one shotting him but even changing tactics didn’t quite work. The fights got really complicated and Caps was just too strong.
It was harder to lose against SK
I really didn’t like losing to SK in that fashion. It was embarrassing and I hope the next time we face them we beat them.
It was much harder to lose against SK than G2. In the SK game we pretty much just rolled over and died, we didn’t do anything. I don’t want people to look at this game and think this is what we do because this is not how Excel normally play. This is the first time where we’ve had a game and did nothing.
I’m not sure if this was because of the G2 loss the day before but we did put all our energy into that game. I don’t think we were necessarily influenced by that.
I really didn’t like losing to SK in that fashion. It was embarrassing and I hope the next time we face them we beat them. We had something to prove in the G2 game, that if we beat them then people would realise we’re actually a good team but I guess coming close to beating them did that job anyway and people are starting to respect us.
But against SK, it was just an off day. I don’t even like using the term ‘off day’ because it sounds like an excuse but it was just a bad day. I honestly don’t even know what happened.
Facing Misfits and Schalke 04
We want to put this weekend behind us because next week is potentially our toughest weekend. I really don’t want to lose to Misfits, I will try as hard as I possibly can to make sure we beat them. As long as we get a good showing then I’m pretty confident, I just hope we don’t roll over like we did against SK.
As players, you’re really hungry and you want results.
Of course, there will be a lot of pressure because this will be a testament to see where we belong in the ladder. But at the same time, as an organisation, we’re very aware that we have a long term plan and a long term goal. We’re looking more towards the Summer Split and beyond in terms of achieving results.
As players, you’re really hungry and you want results straight away so I think most players are impatient when it comes to it, and I myself am included in that. I want to see results now and I want to prove myself but we have to be patient.
I want to go out there and beat both Misfits and Schalke and if we get stomped 2-0, there might be a serious problem, but if we actually do well then it shows we’re on the right track for the long term goals with the organisation.
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