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2025-04-20 11:00:04admin

SK's Epitacio "TACO" de Melo shared details on the team's status, their Inferno and the loss to mousesports.

SK clinched playoff status on the fourth day of StarSeries i-League Season 4, defeating Natus Vincere in a two-map series. The first map, Cobblestone, started badly for the Brazilians, but they turned it around after a blunderous round by Natus Vincere and the series was sealed by a confident Inferno win.

TACO feels that their recent Inferno results have been good

In our post-match interview, Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo revealed that they tried to anti-strat MOUZ, which backfired, and that they are in the process of rebuilding the team so they could stay on top.

Until the mousesports game from the other day you had a perfect score against them, this was your first loss, so what did you think about that game, why did it go out of hand?
Against mousesports, what I can say is that they played really well and we had an off day, we were playing kind of robotic and that is not a style we are good with. On Mirage we had a chance to win the map, but we lost some clutches at the beginning of the match. I think everyone was off and when we decided to wake up, it was too late. On Inferno we had no chance even though we knew that we would play against them on that map. We knew the style that they play but we played really bad as a team and I can say that we had an off day, I think only coldzera, as always, was playing well. Everyone else was playing bad.
When I interviewed coldzera he said that you weren't really confident, that you lacked confidence playing at summit. Why was that?
We are always confident, to be honest, but when we came back from vacation we had to play with felps at the Major and then, of course, we lost some time to practice with boltz. At the end of the last year we were the best in the world and we won three tournaments in a row or something like that, and we won the last tournament of the year as well, which was EPL S6. We knew that we would have to change to become good again because every team was watching us, they knew how we play and after the Major we decided to change some things, to change some positions on the maps, some holds, some strats... we were rebuilding the team, the playstyle, the strats, everything.
Even though we were doing this, we were still confident, at least me, I know that I trust my teammates, that I have the best players in the world by my side. Even though we had a tough time at the beginning of the year, the last year was the same. I was always confident, at least me.
Tell me about that Cloud9 game, you obviously lost to them at the Major. How was it playing against them now and to get the win here?
Cloud9 is playing really well, they play beautiful CS, but a good thing about our team is that we learn really fast. We had some losses to them, we watched the matches, we fixed some mistakes that we did. Losing to Cloud9 and even Liquid at summit was really good for us, not because we lost the tournament obviously but to learn and to fix things. I think the right term would simply be that we learn fast. We were really confident in the match against Cloud9 because we knew what we should have done to win.
Talking about the Na`Vi game, I obviously have to ask about you starting on Cobblestone, it was 6-1 and then there was that coldzera round when s1mple tries to knife him. Just tell me your thoughts on that and how the team reacted to that situation?
To be honest, it was a really good mistake for us and really bad mistake for Na`Vi from s1mple. I don't know if he had bullets in his pistol, coldzera was with 10hp or something like this, he was really low, and that gave us the match because with that round we got a chance to recover our half as CT and that is what we did. The CT half was 8-7 for us and it was 6-1 for them, and that round would break our economy.
On Inferno, Natus Vincere has been having a pretty decent run. That is kind of a map you struggle with, how did you win it so easily?
Just going back to the match against mousesports, against them we did something that we never do, we did some anti-strats, and against Natus Vincere today and Cloud9 yesterday as well we decided to just play our game. "Let's just play guys, we don't need to anti-strat to win".
For the match today we just played our game, of course, we were struggling on Inferno, I don't know if we are still struggling on Inferno, but we spent a lot of time the last week in our gaming house, just practicing on this map. Trying to change, trying to learn how to play the map as well. And it's a good thing that everyone is picking Inferno against us because we've gotten a lot of experience on the map now, even if we lost. But by far, the results on Inferno have been good for us, we won against Cloud9, now against Na`Vi, both teams have a really good Inferno, we only lost to mousesports. I think that we are still learning on Inferno, but it's a map that we are still confident playing.
Any wishes for the playoffs, any thoughts?
About the playoffs, I don't like to think too much, I just want to play. I believe in my team, I still think that we are a really good team and that we can win this tournament, even though we are not on our best level right now, I still think that even if we are not playing that good as at the end of the year we have a good chance. So I have no thoughts, I just want to play and win the tournament.