Rival’s CaptainTwig breaks down how his team made Finals at SMITE Worlds

Benjamin “CaptainTwig” Knight, jungler for Team Rival, caught up with Melissa “BestTaco” Posada just after qualifying for the Grand Finals of the SMITE World Championship to tell Dexerto how it felt to make it into the biggest match of the year. 

CaptainTwig seemed perhaps more at ease than you’d expect a player of his caliber before entering what could be one of the biggest matches of his career. After demolishing Dignitas 3-0, he stated that the plan was never to let his opponents show up to the game at all.

“We decided we’d try to run the early game,” he said. “Dignitas tend to play as a team pretty well and play the late game, and basically, our plan was not to let them stall ever and finish the games quickly.”

However, most fans weren’t expecting a 3-0 finish to the set, expecting far more of a fight out of Dignitas, who have had a champion pedigree in SMITE since its foundation.

“I thought we’d 3-1, maybe 3-2,” he said, with a chuckle. “I thought we’d come out slow, that they’d maybe take a map off of us, and we’d come back, but we just swept them.”

One of the main factors that analysts pointed to as the reason for Rival’s victory in the set was Twiggy’s dominance in the jungle over Dignitas’ qvofred. Twigg didn’t mince words on why that happened, either.

“Basically, my goal was to keep track of qvo was, and not letting him get any ganks off on any of our lanes was fundamental to keeping him shut down,” he said.

Of course, now that we’re headed to the Grand Finals of the SMITE World Championship, the pressure is mounting. Twiggy says that one of the most significant issues has been not letting the pressure get to him.

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“I’d say the biggest issue has been keeping focus. It’s tough to maintain focus in comms, with all the crowd noise and staying calm in the real hype moments. That’s probably the hardest thing.”

Looking ahead to the Finals, Rival seems confident they haven’t delivered the last of their bag of tricks.

“There’s still a few pocket picks fans haven’t seen from us yet,” he said. “We’ll have entertaining characters throughout the series.”

Team Rival will now advance to the Finals to play against the winners of SK Gaming vs. Renegades at 3:15 PM Eastern on Sunday, November 17.