“We are the underdogs, and we are winning:” NAVI Rhilech on his growth, mindset, and LEC success

Natus Vincere (NAVI) entered LEC Versus 2026 with an almost entirely rookie roster and little expectations after its Summer 2025 debut.

However, the roster has quickly shaken up the standings and became one of the first three teams to secure a spot in the Playoffs, finishing its debut regular season in second place. A key part of that run has been the team’s jungler, Enes ‘Rhilech‘ Uçan. 

In an interview with Esports Insider after NAVI’s win over G2, Rhilech opened up about the mindset that has shaped his journey from ERL champion to one of the LEC’s standout rookies. Rhilech shared insights on NAVI’s underdog mentality, the team’s focus on improvement over results, and the champion picks he hopes to unleash in Fearless Draft — Shaco not included.

Read the full interview below.

Rhilech: It feels amazing. We just beat G2. It was kind of like a stomp game.

It was really amazing to win against G2, especially against SkewMond, because two years ago, when he was in LFL, I never won against him. And coming into LEC, fourth week in my early career, he did Worlds like top eight, beating him here feels really amazing.

Rhilech: It feels really amazing. We are the underdogs, and we are winning. It is a really good feeling.

For other players, I don’t think we are underdogs anymore. We are going to be a top four, top five team in other teams’ eyes from now on. So it’s going to be really amazing to play in the playoffs as well.

Rhilech: Generally speaking, macro gameplay, I think that’s the biggest issue. We are really talented players. We are really good at mechanics. We are kind of on the same page, but our macro is sometimes lacking — especially against Karmine Corp. That was a really hard game to play. They were really good at taking control of the map. They kind of beat us on the map. So we want to improve on micro gameplay.

Rhilech: I think I already bring forward a lot of champions. I have a really good feeling for Fearless, but we will see, because we didn’t scrim in Fearless. It was like four weeks of best-of-one in LEC.

There was no point to scrim Fearless. But from next week, we’ll start scrimming Fearless, and we will see what we can bring. I don’t know yet, the capability, the maximum number of champions that I can bring, but you will see. 

Rhilech: No, no, no way. There is no chance. No way Shaco is coming and stealing my red level 1 too. Oh my God. I cannot imagine. [laughs]

Rhilech: I saw Hecarim got buffed and also tried him in SoloQ, and I really like him. Actually, when I started playing League, Ekko, Hecarim, and Kayn were my top three champions. I was only playing these three.

I want to maybe bring Hecarim or Kayn to the Fearless Draft in the playoffs. It will be really amazing to win with my own champions in the playoffs against good top teams in the LEC.

Rhilech: My expectations were to be in the top four junglers in the LEC in my first year.

For my second year, I want to become the best. I want to be the best jungler in the league next year, that’s my expectation. So far it’s going good, I think. I feel like I’m among the top four junglers and we will see in next month’s how it goes and then next year.

Rhilech: The only disappointing part was like the spectators. I don’t think there are many spectators for LEC. Maybe it’s just because of regular games, but the stage feels a little bit smaller than I expected.

And there aren’t too many people watching. It’s like 200 people, I think. I was expecting 1,000 or something kind of a bit more, but the rest, I don’t have any disappointments or anything.

Rhilech: After games we have fan meets, and it’s really good to see people communicating with you, seeing their comments on Twitter and everywhere else. It feels really good. The art is really good. People know you, people know you are good, people know you are playing good — that feels amazing.

For the road trip, that’s our team goal right now, to go to Barcelona, and we are working on that, and we will be there.

Rhilech: I have no idea how this works because I didn’t get any bad habits or anything, but the idea is good. To bring this to help players, to help them improve and build discipline.

Rhilech: My approach is ‘not winning to improve’. I don’t want to only win. I want to keep improving. If you keep improving, even just 1% every day, eventually, in the end, you will win. That’s the biggest thing that matters when you’re a pro player. And most of the players don’t understand this, they want to only win, win, win… But winning is not the only thing that matters.

Rhilech: The biggest trigger point was last year in BK ROG Esports when we won the LFL. But everything — scrims — was going really badly, we were shaky in official matches. We were kind of choking, but after one point, I realised, “okay, it doesn’t matter. In the end, we just need to improve. We just need to focus on what’s next.”

With this mentality, together as a team, we approached it like this. It worked out really well; we won the LFL. We went from almost getting eliminated by one game to winning the LFL. It was a really amazing one.

This year, in the LEC team, we are really professional. We all have a mental coach, Zuzanna Hejduk-Mostowy. She’s really helping on this matter as well and everyone is kind of on the same page about improving. We care about winning, but the main goal is to improve, and everyone has this mindset in the team.