Articles/Channel2News/USAvsItaly.htm

Thursday, February 7, 2008

To stay alive in this competition, USA had to defeat Italy in today's tiebreaker.... and they did!

Starting off, Italy scored two using the hammer advantage, and then stole one in the second. In the third end, things looked tough for the USA. When skip Augusto Perez had to throw the final stone, the US was facing two Italian counters. After closely analyzing the situation, the team chose to the only logical shot, which was still an extremely difficult double tapback. Perez threw it perfectly with the right weight and punched our rock right into the button! USA put one point on the board to keep us alive in the game.

In the fourth end, Italy attempted a near impossible double tapback for one point instead of conceding one. This plan backfired on them, and the shot came up narrow and raised one more US stone into the house giving us a gigantic steal of three, and a lead of 4-3. In the fifth end, Italy scored one point on a very nice shot by the Italian skip.

You could feel the tension in the sixth end as both countries battled for the final spot. Our USA squad rose to the occasion and played an absolutely brilliant end! The Italian skip was faced with an extremely difficult freeze attempt on his final stone that sailed just an inch wide and a couple inches heavy. USA scored 2 points in the 6th end, bringing the final score to 6-4.

USA is now in the medal round and will face Norway tomorrow. In the other semi-final game, Canada will face top-ranked Korea.