​ Cloud9 is 5-1 after defeating Clutch Gaming on Sunday in Week 3 of the NA LCS. Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi spoke with DBLTAP's Nathan Fusco after the match to talk about being the only remaining original member of Cloud9 and more.

Nathan Fusco: When you play a team that’s not doing the best, what’s the mindset? Are you guys trying to hold things back and keep things secret? Or are you guys treating it like a normal game?





Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi: There’s definitely not as much pressure on us if you compare playing against a super strong team, like if you’re at Worlds playing against a SKT or something. It’s definitely not nearly the same pressure because your against a team not doing that hot but you still have to take it seriously. You always have to be doing the same thing and trying to improve as much as you can. If you do get too laxed then that's where the upsets happen and the other team comes back. It could just be that they’re starting to play really well, they figured out what’s going on. I think it’s also both sides screwing up, rather than just one side. We have to take it as seriously as we can.





NF: You sir, are the last OG member of Cloud9. You’ve got Jensen that’s been here for a few years, but you are it. Does it feel weird thinking about that? You are the original, you are the only one left. You ever get lonely?





ZS: I don’t know about lonely but I’ve definitely been thinking about it more. The more I play the more I’m like, wow where’d my old teammates go? Recently, I was playing against Meteos in scrims and we were winning one of the games really hard, I started feeling sad for Meteos. I want to see him do well. I kind of get the same feeling for all my teammates but especially Meteos.





NF: Is it just the way it goes? Did you ever assume that the five players were ever going to be on four different teams?





ZS: No I didn’t actually. I kind of felt if any of us stepped down, we’d go to the support staff for Cloud9 so we’d always be together. It’s pretty surprising. It happens a lot with most the teams; everyone’s going to have new teammates all the time. People lose motivation or just things happen. It’s going to get changed up. I think it’s a lot of other people that have a million teammates as well. I think Doublelift probably has a pretty wide spread.





NF: Let’s talk about another teammate that's not playing right now: Balls. Do you think he’s somebody that should be viable, even in maybe the Academy teams?





ZS: Yeah, I think he definitely deserves an Academy spot. Maybe he just didn’t feel like he wanted that and wanted a LCS spot or maybe he wanted a break. I haven’t really talked to him about it. I know he’s playing solo queue, I think his name is Diamond 2 player. I saw him streaming under that name. He’s still trying to get up there.





NF: I don’t know how many times you’ve done this, the maid costume was that the first ever time you’ve did that?





ZS: It wasn’t the first time actually. There was another one someone sent me, it was a school girl thing. That was number one, I just wore it on stream. I never posted pics of it or anything. It kind of went low key I guess, but the maid costume is pretty cool.





NF: So there’s been two total?





ZS: Mhm. I had another one in a cosplay but that wasn’t from a fan.





NF: So the question is why? Is it because you want to show the fans some love or is it screw it this looks amazing I’m going to wear it? What’s the mindset?





ZS: The first one originally some dude was saying jokingly if I sent you something would you wear it. I’m like, yeah man, sure bud. He kept asking and I never had any way for him to give it to me, without giving him my address, which I didn’t want to do. Eventually, we had a PO Box, so then he sent it there. I put it on the stream. It was mainly a lot of time of pushing and I was like f*** it, I’ll just wear it. It was pretty funny for everyone watching.





NF: This team. You lose Impact. You bring on Svenskeren. A lot of questions in the off-season. The meme was you guys lost the offseason. You guys are starting hot once again. Is the expectation that you guys are going to be a top team in the league and move onto Worlds? Or are you guys tapering a bit and getting used to this new roster?





ZS: Our own expectations were to try to just try to do as well as we can. Building synergy throughout spring. It’s been working really well so far. It’s also best-of-ones so you’re not seeing the full picture of every team. There’s a lot of teams that will do really well in best-of-one seasons, and they’ll go into playoffs and they start losing. Even if they’re doing best-of-threes as well, best-of-fives are a whole different beast. You can be up two games and start getting really relaxed and lose the next three. I’ve done a few of those myself. I think we’re going to trying to do as well as we can.





Sights aren’t set on Worlds yet because it’s whatever's in front of us. It’s week to week and when it comes up to playoffs, we’ll try to do our best there and prep as hard as we can. MSI potentially and then it’s playoffs and then it’s Worlds.





NF: Were you pretty bummed when they went to one game? Best-of-one from the best-of-three?





ZS: It’s definitely different. I’ve done it before. I guess the difference was before when they were doing best-of-ones they had a lot more games and the way they dealt that was they did super weeks. It feels weird only playing against every team twice and I feel like there should have been some compensation for it with playoffs. I don’t know how great the idea is but it was something like all 10 teams are involved in playoffs. Whether it’s best-of-one or it’s a full losers bracket\, I think there should have been something to help that out. I think most of the teams are going to do really well in the split. There’s just a lot of strong rosters. It could be really odd if you eliminate everyone purely from best-of-ones.

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