Gushue falls to McEwen in early draw
Manitoba’s Mike McEwen defeated local favourite Brad Gushue 8-4 in Sunday’s early draw at the Tim Hortons Brier.
It was McEwen’s second win of the round robin while Gushue fell to 1-1.
“As we got a little bit behind, the execution just wasn’t there,” Gushue said. “It was just sloppy. It was one of those games where it didn’t feel like it was there. So we’ll shake it off, you’re probably not going to go through this undefeated.
“Mike is going to beat a lot of teams and we’ll regroup. It’s not a big deal. It’s certainly disappointing but we can rebound from this.”
Gushue threw a perfect game in his opening victory over Alberta on Saturday afternoon. The front end was strong for the St. John’s team Sunday but Gushue slipped to 82 per cent and third Mark Nichols was at 76 per cent.
McEwen, meanwhile, finished at 88 per cent. His in-off for three points in the eighth end silenced the near-capacity crowd at Mile One Centre.
“We had a good idea going into this morning what we were going to have to do,” McEwen said. “We were able to keep the crowd a little quieter. It got noisy in the first half but we quieted them down in the second.”
Canada’s Kevin Koe joined McEwen at 2-0 after a 6-4 win over Brad Jacobs of Northern Ontario. In the other early games, Saskatchewan’s Adam Casey defeated Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher 11-5 and Ontario’s Glenn Howard beat John Morris of British Columbia 5-3.
Round-robin play continues through Friday morning and the medal games are set for next Sunday.