We caught up with Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield after BIG clinched a spot in the playoffs by beating mousesports in the last round of matches in Kiev.

BIG started out StarSeries i-League Season 6on the wrong foot, losing matches to Fragsters and OpTic. They were then able to turn the situation, however, with victories over Complexity, TYLOO, and finally mousesports in the elimination match.

BIG reverse swept their way to the playoffs after beating mousesports

smooya talked to us about the first round restart drama that unfolded, misbuying an autosniper, the mindset that helped BIG bring an 0-2 record to a 3-2, and the odds his team has of lifting the trophy in Kiev.

BIG, 0-2 to 3-2, mousesports, 2-0 to 2-3. What world are we living in?

Uh, I don't know! Paradise, I guess, for Fragsters and those guys because they played a sick event. I'm actually super happy for refrezh out of all people because he has a bad reputation as an onliner and he has proved otherwise.

I'm actually super happy for refrezh out of all people because he has a bad reputation as an onliner and he has proved otherwise. Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield

Then, who would have imagined compLexity going 0-3? I'm actually really excited for the HellRaisers game because that shows... If they make it or if they don't make it, holy hell, you know? Like you said... What world do we live in? I don't even know, man, but it's been good fun!

Regarding the mousesports match, how confident were you going up against the big favorites?

Myself? I was very 50/50 because I've never watched a mousesports demo to try and anti-strat them. We only found out that we were playing them like 10 minutes before we played them, so you can't prepare for that, right? Like, gob b turned up and went straight to live without time to deathmatch, he just set his PC up and played.

I was still here, watching the draw, so I deathmatched more than anyone else and I was feelin' it in deathmatch. I had 5 KDR and I was, like, "This is gonna be a good game!" Same as against compLexity, I had an insane KDR when I deathmatched, and that's how I get my confidence before games, if I'm hitting every flick and instantly one-tapping people, and I was doing that, so I said, "If we get a good start, boys, if we win pistol round, it's minimum 11-4." We got 13-2. And then the T side... I don't know, it was crazy.

There was a restart in the first round, which seems to have been controversial. What happened?

The first pistol round started and everything was OK. I started running towards Ivy because it's the pistol round we play, we were stacking towards B because we lose when we stack A, then I was towards Green Train/Ivy and nex was in connector. So we were going to play retake if we had to...

Anyway, as I was running towards Ivy, and before I even got to Green Train my monitor crashed. I saw the B explode smoke in B connector and a flash, but as the flash hit, my monitor crashed. Full White. Wouldn't change at all. I took my hands off the keyboard and the admin behind me started panicking, wondering what's going on. My teammates couldn't hear me, but I could still move as I started spamming my keyboard wondering what the hell is going on. It was my monitor that crashed, not my PC, so I saw ropz saying, "He was still moving, so he didn't crash," but it was my monitor, and the admin saw it. Then my teammates typed '.stop' and they let us restart the round.

My teammates couldn't hear me, but I could still move as I started spamming my keyboard wondering what the hell is going on. It was my monitor that crashed, not my PC Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield

The autosniper... Mind games?

No! I misbought the autosniper. I paused and asked if I could rebuy because I didn't want to use that gun. I did it in pracc once and just dropped it because I can't hold Ivy with an autosniper, but they didn't let me swap. So I was, like, "OK, fine. I see you guys, I see what you're doing. I'll use my gun, then," and I got something like 12 kills in five rounds, or something like that. If they watch the demo they'd wish I could rebuy. But yeah, I didn't mean any BM by buying the autosniper, I literally paused and tried to restart it, and I feel like they took it really personally. I really didn't want it to go that way.

I didn't mean any BM by buying the autosniper, I literally paused and tried to restart it, and I feel like they took it really personally. I really didn't want it to go that way Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield

The second pistol round, you went pop and got killed by oskar and it kind of fell apart.

I wasn't even meant to be in pop, but because I had such a good spawn they told me to go take pop. So I got pop, and if I wasn't an idiot I would have just crouched and held like any normal human, but I was just jumping around like a noob and he full-running P2000'd me, so I was just like, "Wow, OK, I understand. I see how it is." So yeah, it was an on-the-fly call and it just didn't work out.

mouz and CT-side comebacks on Train are a thing. At what point were you realizing they were coming back?

13-9. That's when you go from being ten rounds apart to like four rounds apart, and you're, like, "F**********ck." That's just one buy round, you know? I was sure we were going to lose that game, like very, very confident. I just said to myself, "Oh, man, it's happening..." The chrisJ-oskar dual AWPs are impenetrable, but tiziaN had an unbelievable round on 13-11, and then I had a really good round on 14-11 when I was just fearless going up on trains and just killing everyone, so that was really lucky. I'm glad we managed to close it out, I'm super happy.

The chrisJ-oskar dual AWPs are impenetrable, but tiziaN had an unbelievable round on 13-11, and then I had a really good round on 14-11 when I was just fearless going up on trains and just killing everyone, so that was really lucky. I'm glad we managed to close it out, I'm super happy Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield

After the first two days you were pretty emo, putting out some tweets...

No! I wasn't emo or anything at all. It's not like I find events trash or anything, the reason I'm upset here is that I'm just not comfortable because I have some personal stuff going on, which I need to sort out, but everything is going to be fine soon. We're still winning, which is good, so I'm just happy.

So how did you manage to turn the 0-2 around...

(A 1vs2 clutch replay starts to play on the TV in the background)

Look at this round, 1vs2. Oh, look at my face, (mimics his reaction on the replay) "Let's f****ckin' goooooooo!"

(laughs)

Wait, what was the question?

You were 0-2, rough start, you could have gone the compLexity way, but you managed to turn it back around...

Yeah, I think we were just really, really underprepared for the first two games. Again, we have a practice room, but the first day after we lost I didn't watch any demos, I didn't even set-up my gear. I just went back to my room and slept. I said, "I don't care who we face tomorrow, we're gonna beat them." Then we lost (laughs). Against OpTic. We got absolutely banged. I was thinking we'd beat anyone in the pool, and then we didn't.

I said, 'I don't care who we face tomorrow, we're gonna beat them.' Then we lost (laughs). Against OpTic. We got absolutely banged. I was thinking we'd beat anyone in the pool, and then we didn't Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield

At that point we all just said to ourselves, "Guys, we need to stop this, we need to start trying, we need to prepare for the teams, we need to go and deathmatch and stuff like that." So yeah, we just had the wakeup call.

With mousesports out now...

Who can beat us?

Yeah.

NRG, maybe? But I think we have a very good stylistic match-up against them. I don't know. I'm really confident against any team in a BO3 here. Even these 2-2 games should have been a BO3. I said we'd beat any 2-2 team here in a BO3. I don't want to be really confident and say, like, "Oh, yeah, we're gonna win the event," but I'm like... Okay, let's say, if I were a gambling man and jackpots were still a thing and I was going to go into a 5K pot with 1K, so 20% chances, I'd go in. Boom! I'm all-in. So yeah, about 20% chance we win the LAN, maybe. Maybe North? They have a hard game against Imperial, though, and I'm excited to see who wins.

You get along pretty well with the Imperial guys, right?

Yeah, I love the Imperial guys, hAdji is really good friends from CS. EspiranTo I really used to hate, but he's grown on me. He's like a toothache, you know? Like when you get used to it and you just live with the toothache (laughs). He's kinda like my toothache. I love the coach, Neil_M, so I hope they win. I'd be super happy for them.

So BIG and mousesports, two German organizations, a lot of tense moments and screaming...

There's always screaming.

Do you think this is the birth of a rivalry?

Yeah, there's a rivalry anyway because its the two German orgs and you don't want your enemy to do well, but I don't think it means anything extra. I didn't mean anything bad at all by buying the autosniper, I even apologized to them, so I don't want this to be a rivalry, but if they want a rivalry we'll see what happens, I guess?