Trial and tribulation never bother OpTic Texas head coach Ray “Rambo” Lussier, just as long as it stayed inside Call of Duty.
The exterior roadblocks, those are less welcome. Like a lingering thumb injury to the unsung leader of a Call of Duty League championship-aspiring team, or missing scrimmages with a sick player.
OpTic Texas blew a series lead in a 3-2 loss to the Boston Breach Friday, and did so on little practice. Lussier said OpTic only got “a few” scrimmages in over the past couple weeks.
Indervir “iLLeY” Dhaliwal wasn’t ready as OpTic hoped, Byron “Prolute” Vera had to catch a flight to Dallas and an OpTic play got sick — Lussier said the player still didn’t fell well in a phone interview with The Dallas Morning News Friday evening.
The result was a sloppy loss.
“After Toronto, we were pretty confident Inder was going to be good to come back. Everything was trending to the point where we weren’t going to be worried about him playing or not,” Lussier said. “So we decided to not really practice and play with Byron until (Inder) came back and felt like he was ready.”
In fairness to Lussier and OpTic Texas, Dhaliwal wouldn’t have been able to practice during that time anyways as he was recovering from a cortisone shot in his thumb.
But the rest of OpTic missed an opportunity to get better during a crucial stretch of the season. Lussier was candid in saying OpTic wasn’t too prepared for Boston.
“We were all over the place and a lack of fundamentals,” Lussier said. “Probably our worst showing of the year.”
OpTic Texas won’t be able to shake the rust off overnight before a 5 p.m. CST match Saturday against the Minnesota Rokkr. Texas can still win that match with better execution. The silver lining was that the match against Boston was quite winnable despite Texas not being as prepared as usual.
OpTic took a 2-0 lead in the series by clutching up in the closing moments of the Gavutu hardpoint and through Prolute’s round-11 clutch on Bocage search and destroy. The next two maps weren’t close, but OpTic tossed rounds away in the final Berlin search and destroy.
That was a match prime OpTic Texas would have swept. Texas might not be able to get that back if it doesn’t have Dhaliwal.
“Inder is one of a kind. Nothing against Byron. Byron is a great player, but Inder has that kind of leadership role and communication aspect for the team and gets through to his players in the way he can,” Lussier said. “It just so happens that our injured player is obviously very talented on the skill front, but also our in-game leader and voice of reason.”
Lussier is optimistic that OpTic Texas’ current situation won’t happen again. In his experience, it was rare for and esports team to have the walls all crash in at once.
But OpTic still has another match to play this weekend. And then another Major to compete at, and a world championship to vie for.
As long as that’s the case, Lussier saw no reason why the year couldn’t end better than things were Friday.
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