Epping back from the grave
Squeaks into tiebreaker after starting event 0-3
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2016 (2673 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
BRANDON — John Epping was dead to rights.
With three consecutive losses to open the Home Hardware Canada Cup of Curling — 8-3 to Reid Carruthers, 7-5 to Kevin Koe and 7-3 to Mike McEwen — nobody gave the Toronto skip a chance.
Three wins later, culminating in a 7-6 triumph over Brad Jacobs in the round-robin finale Friday evening at Westman Place, Epping (3-3) is alive and well and improbably finds himself in this afternoon’s men’s tiebreaker against the winner of Steve Laycock and Brad Jacobs, who play at 8:30 a.m.
Laycock split a pair of games Friday, first beating Carruthers 5-3 in the morning before losing 8-6 to Epping in the afternoon.
Even when nobody gave Epping a chance he and his team kept fighting, doing what many observers thought was impossible.
“It’s kind of the same as last year, we were in tiebreakers and we had to battle our way through and just seems like we don’t do anything easy,” Epping said. “This just comes normal for us. We’re up for the challenge.”
Down 4-2 after six ends, Epping hit for three in seven and then Jacobs was way light on a draw in eight to give Epping a steal of two and a 7-4 lead. He never looked back.
“We were out of it for a while down two and got a fortunate break when Brad missed,” Epping said. “That’s very rare and we took advantage of it, took advantage of the last few ends and it feels really good.”
McEwen had a chance to join the tiebreaker fun with a win against defending champion Kevin Koe but the Calgarian’s final stone in an extra end dug into enough of the 12-foot area to eliminate McEwen. Both men finished at 2-4.
There was also drama on the women’s side in the evening with at least one tiebreaker ensured before the draw began.
Edmonton’s Val Sweeting (3-3), after losing 7-3 to last year’s winner Rachel Homan in the morning, gave Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones her first loss of the week. After Kelsey Rocque got her first win by knocking off another Winnipegger, Kerri Einarson, 6-5 in the afternoon, Sweeting knew she’d be playing today.
“Ideally you don’t want to be in tiebreakers but after the start we had and (Friday) morning we’ll take tiebreakers for sure,” Sweeting acknowledged.
But Einarson still had a chance to get into a tiebreaker when she faced last season’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts winner, Chelsea Carey, who stayed alive by downing Tracy Fleury of Sudbury, Ont., 7-4 in the morning draw.
A steal of two in the seventh end was the difference for Carey against Fleury.
With the opportunity to play today on the line, Einarson came out hot with an opening-end deuce and she hit for two more in four to grab a 4-2 lead. She added two more in six before a tap for one in 10 earned her a point and a 7-6 win.
“I wish I would have just played like that my last couple of games otherwise we wouldn’t be in a tiebreaker right now, but that’s OK,” Einarson admitted. “I’ll just come out and hopefully shoot like that (today).”
“We get a chance and that’s all we could ask for when we came to this event,” she continued. “Coming to this event we had a really rough start so to be in the tiebreaker is pretty awesome.”
Einarson will face Sweeting at 8:30 a.m., after Rocque later played spoiler against Fleury in the evening. A win by Fleury would have forced a second tiebreaker, but Rocque finished at 2-4 with another closely-contested 6-5 win.
The winner of Sweeting-Einarson gets a date with Homan in the semifinal at 1:30 p.m.
Homan (4-2) was blitzed early and often by Jones (5-1) in a battle for first place in the evening. There was terrific shot-making on display by both teams, however, Jones was responsible for the louder roars of approval from the fans.
Jones won 9-4 and clinched a spot in Sunday afternoon’s final.
“It was a big game,” she said. “We wanted to win that one and get ourselves into the final and get a day off. I thought we came out and played well and took advantage of a couple of misses by them and never really looked back.”
Did she send a message to Homan?
“I don’t know if it’s about sending a message, but we are playing well and hopefully we can win one more fame and capture the Canada Cup,” Jones added.
The Mark Nichols-led Team Gushue awaits its opponent in the men’s final, Sunday at 6:30 p.m. They finished the round robin at 4-2, beating Koe 5-3 in the morning after he was heavy with a potential game-tying 10th-end draw, before falling 8-6 to McEwen in the afternoon.
Team Gushue earned a spot in the final courtesy of a head-to-head win over Carruthers, who also finished 4-2, earlier in the week.
“Feeling pretty good,” Nichols said. “We let a couple of chances slip away against Mike and they played real well, so it is what it is.”
He is still in the final with the chance to earn a berth in the 2017 Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings Canadian Curling Trials field and so much more is within reach.
Carruthers hopes to play for that berth, too. After his morning loss to Laycock, he rebounded by beating Jacobs 5-1 — in a game with five blanks — using two points in both the eighth and ninth ends to claim the win.
“We didn’t have much of a turnaround after the disappointing game in the morning,” Carruthers said. “We had a hard-fought battle with Steve, who is always a really good team, and then having to play the Olympic champions your next game, having to win to get in it was a little bit nerve-racking.”
— Brandon Sun