Counter Logic Gaming has been a mainstay at the top of the North American Counter-Strike scene throughout 2015 and have been doing their best to challenge their rivals to claim the title as best in their region. Although they have fallen to other challengers in the past, they've managed to stay strong this weekend to claim an event win at the Northern Arena LAN following a 2-0 win over compLexity in the Grand Finals.

Following their match, theScore eSports sat down with CLG’s Stephen "Cutler" Cutler to talk about how the team will be preparing for the ESL ESEA Season 2 Finals, his expectations for their group, and how he feels about the team’s 2015 year.

Before we get into your team's results this weekend, why do you think Nexus eSports​ made it to the semifinals despite being a pug roster playing against five-man rosters?

The thing is they're unpredictable. It's hard to read what they're going to do. The only reason pug teams win usually is because they surprise the other team. If they're hitting their shots, it's really hard to stop them.

You went 3-0 in the group stage and were fairly dominant from the start. Did you feel that if you came into the group and played your game that you would come out as easily as you did?

For groups yeah. I figured once we got to the semifinals it might be hard, because Splyce are up and coming and should still have that new team hype. It is good to see them coming to LANs because if they stay together I feel like they will be a top team.

Speaking of Splyce, you played them in the semifinals. You ended up dropping a map to them, but how did you feel about that match in general?

Recently they beat us in two best-of-threes online, so we really wanted to beat them, but every time we played them on Dust2 they crushed us. This time we beat them pretty handily on it. It was pretty weird because we figured Train was one of their worst maps, but they ended up beating us pretty badly on it. We were nervous a little bit because after the first map we were thinking "oh they're going to beat us on LAN now too," but we managed to pull it together.

About Train, seeing as you lost on it to Splyce, were you nervous when compLexity picked it in the finals?

No, we kind of assumed they were going to pick it. It is one of our maps that we feel most comfortable on. Usually when we do vetos against North American teams, we just leave the maps we are most comfortable on and veto out maps that we don't like to play on. Like Inferno, people know we don't like to play on Inferno.

In regards to the finals, you went up against an incomplete compLexity with Warden standing in. You had some trouble early on the in the first game, but it seemed like after you got into overtime you had turned back on for the rest of the match. Did you have trouble getting into the game with hazed back in the lineup?

It was just what they were doing was countering what we do. On Mirage, we usually do heavy mid control, but they just kept running out A with four people or something like that. It was just something we weren't used to. We know teams do that, but usually it's not like every round they were doing it. So once we figured it out we just started playing three on A and it seemed to work. As far as overtime of that game, I think the long pause just gave us a lot of time to talk about what to do.

So once you guys figured it out everything started working for you guys from then on?

Well actually, Train is one of their better maps. During the ESEA season they beat us 16-2 on Train, but we recently beat them on Train online. It is kind of hit or miss for us on Train against them I think. It's mostly just about who can have a really good CT-side.

Moving ahead, you play in the ESL ESEA Finals this week. You have a pretty stacked group with the insane form Luminosity showed recently. How do you feel going into that group? What's your game plan to try to get out?

Lucky for us, TSM seems like they're in a little slump right now so hopefully they stay in it until we get there. The thing about TSM is that, I wouldn't say predictable, but they're very default base. Against Fnatic, you're scared that Olof is just going to run out and kill you, but when you play ex-TSM, you pretty much know what they're going to do, it's just that their teamwork is so good. The same kind of thing goes for Na`Vi, and it seems like we have a little rivalry with them now since we have played them in both Majors. We're excited to play them again. As far as Luminosity, they're on a high right now so they're kind of unpredictable to play against. We beat them last ESEA LAN so hopefully we can do it again.

Have you had time to look at any demos or prep for the LAN yet or is that something you will be doing this week since you won't have to travel to get to the event?

Well now that pita is here, he is going to help us for the ESEA LAN, especially since he is from Europe so he will kind of know how they play better than we do. We watched demos of Na`Vi for the Major, which wasn't too long ago, so I don't know how much they have switched up. So we'll probably watch a few of their recent demos, but we don't want to change the way we play. It's just inconsistent that way. We just want to get to know some of their tendencies so we know what to expect.

You guys had a big year for your team. Everything grew a lot, and whenever the NA scene stepped up you seemed to be one of the teams to go up with it. Retrospectively, how do you feel about your year?

I would say that at the beginning of the year we had a really high rise in just how we were doing in tournament. A lot of upsets. Making every Major is pretty huge for us, but we feel a little bit that we have started to plateau or that it has gotten harder to improve. We just want to find a way to improve better.

Looking ahead, you mentioned you felt that success has slowed down. What is your target for the next 12 months in terms of results?

We definitely want to make it out of the group stage at a Major, so that is one of our biggest goals coming up. Hopefully we do well in all the leagues coming up, which I think we should as if we stay at the top of the NA scene we should be good. I think another one of our big goals is being number one in NA. It always seems to switch from Liquid for a couple months, then Cloud9, then Luminosity if you count them. It's our turn to be at the top.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Jacob Juillet writes about Counter-Strike for theScore eSports. Follow him on Twitter.