Game 8 Recap

We had a game a few weeks ago, but I've been out of town and didn't get a chance to do a recap.  This was a close game, but not nearly as exciting as the week before.  We gave up two points to our opponents again this week, but this seemed more deserved as they hadn't won a game yet all season and they have two first year curlers on their team.  Also, I had my entire team together for the game, which actually hasn't happened for a little while.

I'm thinking that the key shot of the game, at least for the opposing skip is shown below.  As you can see, my team is sitting shot, but my opponent is second shot, and then I have two more rocks bunched up in the center.  The situation is my opposing skip has hammer and it's his last shot.  My team is up by one I believe, but the score may have been tied. 

The opposing skip decided that his shot would be to play off his rock and then get a roll sideways into his own rock, which would take out shot rock.  He ended up hitting his rock square and didn't get a roll at all.  My team scored one.

Someone was watching this from upstairs and really believed that there was a way to get all three of my rocks out.  At least for me (and the opposing skip), predicting what would really end up being an explosion of rocks is pretty difficult.  I had also thought it would have been possible for the opposing skip to draw (or possibly throw a takeout) to his rock and then take out my shot rock.  While that's possible, there's also the danger that you take out your own rock and now I'm scoring two or more for the end.  I actually think the call was correct because while there was a high degree of difficulty for the shot, the risk that something worse could happen was fairly small compared to some of the other alternatives.

Game 7 Recap

This one was a heartbreaker.  My team had the game in hand, but we lost on the last shot of the game when the opposing skip made a beautiful draw that barely made it past multiple guards.  Final score was 9-7 and that takes our record down to 4-3.  Sigh.  I'll break down the final four shots of the game here.  It's the eighth end and I'm down 1.  With my first shot, I play a guard to block off any shots on the right side.  I actually threw it light, but my guys barely swept it across the hog line.

With his first shot of the end, the opposing skip went for a takeout on shot rock and his rock stayed.

With my shot, I also went for a takeout.  I thought the shot was perfect because my rock rolled behind a little bit of cover.

But then the skip made an absolutely gorgeous shot to win the game.  That rock barely made it past both guards.

It was really the most exciting game I've been a part of.  I made some pretty dumb mistakes early on.  For example, I had to make a takeout to score four, but then messed it up and the other team scored one.  At one point, my team was down six, but I made a beautiful (and very lucky) double takeout to score three.  The other team played really well though.  I was surprised that they're a D level team and got two points against us.  But I don't think I could've done any better on that last end.