"The atmosphere of the team was a lot happier" - alecks on Paper Rex bouncing back in Week 3 of VCT 2023: Pacific League

The VCT 2023 Pacific League started on March 25, 2023, in Seoul, South Korea. This tournament features 10 of the most popular organizations from across Asia-Pacific, fighting it out in the first-ever Valorant tournament featuring a round-robin format. Paper Rex came into VCT 2023 as one of the top teams to look out for after a promising second-place finish at Masters Copenhagen in 2022. However, their 2023 season saw a fairly rocky start with a 0-2 loss to Cloud9 in Sao Paulo.

In the VCT Pacific League, Paper Rex began the tournament well, going up against Detonation FocusMe. But they failed to impress fans against their SEA rivals, Team Secret. The side showed up to Week 3 looking fresh and strong. They beat T1 2-0 in a dominant two-map series.

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Coach alecks attributes PRX's stellar performance against T1 in VCT Pacific to improved team dynamics and mood

After their relatively lackluster performance against Team Secret, PRX also looked a bit shaky in their match against DFM, closing the series out with heroics from d4v41. The encounter against Team Secret seemed unfavorable for the Singaporean squad, both in terms of ideas and execution, and the spark that had made their #WGaming style so formidable seemed to be missing. Jason "f0rsakeN" Susanto, also displayed a relatively unremarkable performance in that game, as he switched from Yoru on Haven to Neon on Fracture and then Jett on Split.

Moving on to Week 3 of the VCT Pacific League, against T1, all these issues seemed to have vanished almost entirely, and the team looked fresh with new ideas and were sharp with their executions. The addition of Ilya "something" Petrov, had a great impact on their playstyle on Pearl, with f0rsakeN getting in some frags on Killjoy. Even their Fracture setup, which hadn't changed from the previous week, looked much more polished.

In the post-match scrum interview, Sportskeeda esports asked coach Alex "alecks" Salle what, according to him, made the biggest difference in Paper Rex's performance from Week 2 to Week 3. He responded:

"Last week, we were being too careful. We were trying our best not to make mistakes. This week, we gave ourselves a little bit more freedom. We talked about it, and till the middle of the week, we were trying to make sure we were getting into the right mood. I think you will notice that the atmosphere of the team was a lot happier. We were playing our game this week."

Indeed, if one were to go back and look at tapes of the game against T1, PRX appears to be in much higher spirits. alecks' comment highlights an important aspect of professional esports, where confidence is a very key factor, and how players feel going into a matchup has a large impact on the outcome.

The waves of doubts about PRX potentially having lost their x-factor have ebbed away for now. The team faces their "kryptonite," DRX, in their next game set to take place on April 15, 2023, for the top-most position on the League's table.