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jdm64: "A bigger map pool was our goal"

After Liquid placed third in Group B with three wins and two losses, Josh "jdm64" Marzano gave us an interview where he goes over his team's improvement ahead of Pro League Finals, their results in the group, and the upcoming quarter-final against EnVyUs.

In Group B at ESL Pro League Season 5 Finals, Liquid managed to overcome both of their North American opponents, OpTic and NRG, while losing to Natus Vincere and MOUZ.

With a win over North in the last round, Josh "⁠jdm64⁠" Marzano's squad placed third in the group to earn a place in the quarter-finals, where they'll meet Envy in the second series.

jdm64's Liquid are set to play EnVyUs in the second quarter-final

In our next interview from Dallas, Liquid's AWPer gave us his thoughts on his team's improvement with Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz and Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken ahead of the event, their results in the group as well as tomorrow's match against the Frenchmen:

Going back a couple of weeks before the tournament, you weren't able to translate your lineup changes into results at your first two LANs, how have you progressed since then ahead of Pro League?
Well, we just went through a roster change with Twistzz, adding him was a huge deal. Once we added him, it was about fitting him in, which he did really well and fast, because all the spots we needed him for, he was perfect, and he was willing to do whatever we needed, too. But it was just more of developing a bigger map pool, because we've just been going through roster changes a lot lately, so now that we're actually set, it was developing that map pool.
That was something that really hurt us at Summit and Austin, and during that time we didn't really have that much time with him for chemistry and stuff like that. That was our small goal right there, just getting a bigger map pool, having like three strong maps that we always know we can go to. That's just been our short term goal that we've been trying to develop, which I think we're at that point right now.
Talking about the map pool, Cobblestone is one of those three maps you mentioned as you've been hugely successful on it online, what about the other ones, which maps do you think you've improved the most on?
Nuke, definitely, I think even though we lost today on Inferno, that was just individual mistakes, like myself, I didn't play that well. But I would say Inferno has gone up there, our Train, so those are like our strong maps. We can play any map, it's just those are like our go-to's if BO3 comes around.
Talking about your group, how did you feel going up against teams like North, Na`Vi, and mouz?
The state of CS right now is really competitive, we're missing VP and Astralis here, so that tells you right there that anyone can win games. Our group was I would say the easier one, so our goal was just to make it out of groups, and thankfully we did. Like I said, any team win, they're BO1's, so anything can happen on one map.
We started off pretty slow on Train against Na`Vi, we just did not look good as a team. Something we're trying to get better at is just to set the pace, us starting slow hurt us but we knew we had to bounce back. And we had NRG and OpTic, getting those two wins was big, going into today.
We knew that mousesports was gonna be the big match, because we didn't know what was gonna happen, we just knew if we beat mousesports we would have a really good chance. Unfortunately we lost that, so we didn't start off today well either, but we were able to bounce back again and play well against North, who I think already qualified, so who knows if they're all in, playing seriously and everything. But we really wanted it and thankfully OpTic won their match.
Going back to the North American teams, is playing those scarier than playing the European teams, who might not necessarily know you that much?
I would say so, sometimes because we play them so much in practices and online matches, we know each other so well...
Is that a good thing or not?
I think it's more of a bad thing, because you don't have that surprise factor, especially if you're an underdog. If you're facing a European team and we're the underdog, we have that surprise factor that we can pull out against them, whereas against an NA team you can't really do that.
Tomorrow it's playoffs time and for you it means EnVyUs in the quarter-finals, how much do you know about them?
I know all the players on the team, they're all great individuals. I haven't really watched too many of their games. It's kinda hard, because they don't really have an AWPer. Usually, when I watch demos, I watch a lot of the people that have a star AWPer, like kennyS, GuardiaN, or FalleN, I kind of focus on those teams a little bit more.
I think SIXER's AWPing for them and he's been doing pretty well, and I know Happy likes to pick up the AWP sometimes, too. So I don't really know too much about them and what they do, but I'm gonna do my homework tonight.
You've already mentioned the expectations before, wanting to pass groups, now that you have, how have the goals changed?
Yeah. We just wanted to take it one step at a time and our first goal was to make it out of groups, and the next one is just gonna be let's make it to the semis, and the next one to the finals, and the next one is to win it.