Every week, G2’s newcomer Reed “Chicago” Wilen takes our readers behind the scenes of the RLCS. Last weekend saw the first loss of G2, which makes the upcoming weekend all the more important.

In our latest edition of Player’s Diary Chicago speaks about their upcoming match versus Cloud9 and how he and his teammates handled that first loss of the season.

“No one likes losing!”

“We took our first loss versus NRG last weekend. After the match we were all pretty quiet, I’d say. No one likes losing, so you stay silent for a couple of minutes. Then we started talking about the things that we could’ve done better or that went wrong. The first hour after a loss really stings, but then you need to move on , try to eliminate that feeling and focus more on not letting it happen again.

The loss really hurt because after the first game and a half, we kinda outplayed NRG. A lot of people like to think that NRG were really amazing and we were just the worse team. That’s annoying. We were outplaying them from the second half of the second game on for the rest of the series. We just couldn’t capitalize on our opportunities, which is why it stung the most.

Definitely could have won that but what can you do, ggs @NRGgg — G2 Chicago (@Chicago_RL) April 27, 2019

The match versus NRG was super fast and your rotations need to be perfect. You always have to be aware of your space. When we got our space and opportunities, we didn’t get the quality shots that we should have. The placements of our shots weren’t perfect, so they had a couple of lucky saves. In these moments, we need to take that extra half-second to line it up and aim for a corner or hit for a better pass. That kind of stuff was our biggest issue on offense.

“We were super motivated no matter what”

The good news is Cloud9 lost as well, so we still have a shot at Top 2. In fact, we’re right now on second place, so it’s all in our hands now. Cloud9’s match was the match right before ours. We were really pumped after that, but in the end, it didn’t influence our mentality very much. We wanted to win that series either way and were super motivated no matter what. It was just a bonus factor.

We lose 3-1 to SSG leaving us 4-1 in the season. We can still make top 2 and auto qualify for LAN just need to show up next week when it matters most. GGs well played to them, that’s the same Spacestation you see in scrims and they are deadly when they play like that. — C9 Squishy (@SquishyMuffinz) April 27, 2019

So, our final and deciding match of the regular season will be against Cloud9. Earlier that day they will have to face NRG. I guess that this is a positive and a negative for them. They get to warm up against what is the best team in North America right now. That’s always a bonus. But, it will most likely be a close series, and those are always exhausting. They will be warmed up, but not necessarily 100% ready for us. We start warming up roughly an hour before our match, so we might watch the Cloud9-NRG match together.

“Beating Cloud9 is all that matters”

The thing is: There’s basically no scenario where the game differential matters. The only way we make Top 2 despite losing to Cloud9 is if NRG go 0-6 this weekend and we lose to Cloud9 2-3. That’s highly unlikely. So, we need to win. It doesn’t matter if Cloud9 beat NRG or not, we definitely have to beat Cloud9 and that’s all that matters. Right now that’s all we’re focusing on. That Top 2 spot is the goal, because you definitely don’t want to play Regionals if you don’t have to.

THE WAIT IS OVER ??? The G2 Octane decal is now out in the @RLEsports shop! Be sure to grab it before it disappears ? pic.twitter.com/cRlsBcKx7V — G2 Esports (@G2esports) April 30, 2019

One last thing: The G2 items finally hit the store! I saw a couple of the decals online already, especially on the first day. Our decals are possibly the best in the game, and I love it when people tweet pictures with them out to me. It’s just such a cool thing to see!”