SK Telecom T1 took down team MVP to solidify its grip on first place of League Champions Korea’s summer split with a 2-0 victory on Monday. In a post match phone interview with OGN casters Kim “Dangun” Eui-Joong, Lee “CloudTemplar” Hyun-Woo, and Kim Dong-Jun, SKT’s head coach Choi Byung-Hoon said the continued games have taken a toll on his players.

“We had a game every two days for the past 3, so we had to prepare each game on our toes,” he said. “Now that we have some time before our next games, the players are telling me they want to rest.”

CloudTemplar followed up on on the 9 day break before their next game, and how long vacation might be for SKT’s fatigued players. According to the head coach, they can’t be too relaxed due to their next opponent.

“We want to rest a long time, but seeing as we’re facing Samsung next I don’t think we can rest that much,” he said. “That being said, I think we’re going to have (our) longest break this season: about three days.”

Caster Kim Dong-Jun asked more in detail about their practice results and if the team was performing just as well during scrims. Choi gave the usual SKT response.

“I can’t say whether or not we we perform very well in practice games,” he said. “Rather than focusing on winning, we care more about if we were able to play the way we wanted to, and I think we’re still coming up short.”

Caster Kim Dong-Jun also asked about Lee “Duke” Ho-Seong’s rather lackluster performance, giving up solo kills in the top lane, but the head coach assures that he’s not getting worse.

“It’s not that he’s playing bad, it’s more because of the bad lane match up,” he said. “He needed to play with Gnar’s power spike in mind, but I suspect he didn’t play smartly. He does fine during practices.” When CloudTemplar asked him about a potential vacation penalty, he opened Pandora’s Box, as the head coach said he “never considered it, but now (he) will.”

There was also a question of Kang “Blank” Seon-Gu’s dominant play on Gragas, and if he continues to play him as much as he can. Head coach Choi took the opportunity to make some strong statements and encouraging Blank.

“Blank is very good at Gragas, so if no one will ban Gragas, then we will continue to let Blank play him,” he said. “Blank did fine today, but there seems to be a lot of negative criticism toward him. I think it has more to do with people bandwagoning than anything. Even though he does make small mistakes, he plays well overall, so I hope the fans pay more attention to his solid play than his little mistakes. I suspect Samsung is watching this, so I hope very much that they ban Gragas against us.”

Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games.