Liquid made short work of Vega Squadron in the wild card qualifier, winning 2-0 (Inferno 16-9, Cache 16-8) after one-sided CT halves.

With the win, Liquid earned the last spot in Group B, also featuring three of the current top-five teams, Astralis, North, and G2.

Liquid's addition gives Group B an extra flare

After the match, we had a quick chat with Josh "⁠jdm64⁠" Marzano, who shared his thoughts on the group and how they generally manage their expectations:

The wild card match against Vega Squadron ended up being quite straight-forward, did you have any idea of what to expect in what was your first encounter with them?

Nick and some other people studied them on their Inferno, so we actually did have an idea on what they do on Inferno. Cache, we had no clue, we didn't study them on Cache and we just played our own game. We've been practising Cache, so it was more of our game versus what they do and going off tendencies there. It was pretty much just that we went over what we knew we were going to pick, and on the second map just playing our own game.

I imagine you went into it expecting to qualify for the main tournament, how much of a preparation did you put into teams of Group B where you'll end up?

To be honest with you, our mindset nowadays is just that we don't set expectations, anything can happen. We expected us to get out of the Major qualifier last time and we didn't, so it was more of we needed to get this done.

We can't expect anything, but we know we are the better team, the more experienced team and everything, and we just wanted to focus on this match-up and get this done first.

Do you just try to prepare on the fly then, like the night before?

That's what we normally do, yeah.

How do you feel about your group, Astralis, North, and G2?

A lot of good teams. It's going to be really competitive, it's going to be hard to get out, but I know we can do it. We've just got to stay mentally in it, because it's Bo3s, so if we lose map one, we've got to keep our head up going into map two and stay composed. That's our biggest thing right now.

I've previously talked to some of your teammates about your recent uprise, do you account that to the change of leadership and roles, or where do you see that improvement?

I think it has a lot to do with a lot of things. I think our sports psychologist helped a lot, I think it's Nick calling but also Peter being there to be the second caller, and he does a really good job at lurking.

That's his specialty, he gets intel and information when he lurks around the map and he makes plays. When he feels like he can sneak through something he does, so he does a really goob job at lurking. And I think it's just everyone playing well together and keeping a positive mindset through every single match that we play, every round. That's pretty much what we worked on a lot.