 VIRGINIA, Minn. — Three boxes were ticked by Team Brad Jacobs on Thursday afternoon at the 2025 United States Steel Pan Continental Curling Championships. The first, and most obvious, job that was accomplished was the win — a tidy 8-2 triumph over Australia’s Team Hugh Millikin (0-5) at the Iron Trail Motors Event Center that left Jacobs, vice-skip Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert, alternate Tyler Tardi, team coach Paul Webster and national coach Jeff Stoughton with a perfect 5-0 record. The win also locked up a berth in Saturday’s 3 p.m. (all times Eastern) semifinals, where the two winners will play for gold and the losers will play for bronze on Sunday. And thirdly, the win also sealed a berth for a Canadian team at the LGT World Men’s Curling Championship, March 27-April 4 in Ogden, Utah. All in all, a highly productive day for the reigning Montana’s Brier champions from Calgary. “Great to be 5-0 and have the rest of the evening off,” said Jacobs. “We've got four really big games ahead of ourselves and, yeah, I think we're excited to get those games underway.” Team Canada was in control early with deuces in the first and third ends to take a 4-1 lead, and proceeded to steal one in the fourth and three more in the fifth. The Australians conceded after taking a single point in the sixth. Team Jacobs will wrap up round-robin play on Friday with games at 10 a.m. (all times Eastern) against Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (4-1) followed by a hotly anticipated showdown with Team John Shuster of the United States (5-0) in a game that could decide first place in the round robin and last-rock advantage through the playoffs. Two tough Friday games will set the stage for the weekend, and Jacobs, who for the second straight game brought Tardi into the starting lineup, this time at second in place of Gallant, believes his team is ready for the closing grind “I think as you could tell, we had Tyler play both of those games to give our front-end guys who do all the scrubbing a little bit of a rest,” said Jacobs. “Come Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we'll be as fresh as we possibly can be. So that was a little strategic by us and hopefully it works out.” The U.S., Japan and China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (4-1) also clinched semifinal berths Thursday with victories. The first- and fourth-place teams will play in one semifinal, while second plays third in the other. The top four overall finishers besides the host United States will qualify for the LGT World Men’s Championship in Ogden. From the table behind the scoreboard, Webster likes what he’s seeing in the run-up to the playoffs. “I think they're just being very mindful about ice conditions and making the next shot,” he said. “We've been playing really, really well, so I think we keep harsher stats than the event (volunteer scorekeepers) so we know where there's some gaps and so on. But the boys are really focused on not only qualifying Canada for Worlds, which has already been done now, but also ramping up for the Trials. We wanted to come here and get some practice with 10 ends and with similar rocks that we're going to have at the Trials, and just put together eight shots an end and see how that works.” In the other Thursday afternoon games, the U.S. earned an 11-4 victory over New Zealand’s Team Sean Becker (0-5); Japan shaded South Korea’s Team Soo-Hyuk Kim (1-4); and China turned back Team Marc Pfister of the Philippines (1-4) 7-5. Women’s round-robin play continues later Thursday as Canada’s Team Rachel Homan from Ottawa (3-1) takes on China’s Team Rui Wang (4-0) at 8 p.m. Scores, standings and full team lineups are available by CLICKING HERE. All games will be available on World Curling’s streaming platform, The Curling Channel. This story will be posted in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/fr/nouvelles-media/ |
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