Top-ranked Jacobs forced to battle back at Brier
No. 1-ranked Jacobs must now run the table and battle back against a stellar field
It would be the curling equivalent of the Tampa Bay Lightning putting up 128 regular-season points and then getting swept in the first round of the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Brad Jacobs team from Northern Ontario came into the 2020 Tim Hortons Brier with the No. 1 world ranking, top-seed status and all the confidence in the world that it could turn it all into a Canadian curling crown.
But there Jacobs was on Tuesday, clinging to life at the Leon’s Centre, needing to run the table after entering the day with a surprising 1-3 record.
One more loss and Jacobs and his teammates would almost certainly be eliminated from Brier contention before the championship round even begins on Thursday.
“We’ve started slow before and still won events,” Jacobs said Tuesday. “We’ve got a lot of fight in us, a lot of grit and we’re just gonna keep plugging away.
“A little bit of adversity early on at an event is not a bad thing. We’ve been a pretty resilient team all year and we welcome that, to be honest with you.”
Jacobs started down the long road back with a 9-2 win over Alek Bedard of Quebec on Tuesday afternoon to get to 2-3.
His team had a tougher matchup against Nova Scotia’s Jamie Murphy (ranked 20th in Canada) on Tuesday night and was walking a tightrope, with no safety net.
Even if it gets to the championship round, Northern Ontario will be sitting on at least three losses and will have games against the likes of Team Canada’s Kevin Koe, Ontario’s John Epping and Team Wild Card’s Mike Mcewen ahead.
“The harder it is, that’s good,” Jacobs said. “It means you’re going through some growth. If good things are starting to turn our way, we’ll remember the beginning of the Brier and say it was because of how we started that we were able to keep it moving and keep going and maybe prosper.”
The early struggles of Team Jacobs say something about how well the other teams have played so far.
Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher, who beat Jacobs earlier in the week, ran his record to 5-0 on Tuesday, with a 6-2 win over Nova Scotia.
His team has been a model of consistency, with victories already over Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brad Gushue, Jacobs and Manitoba’s Jason Gunnlaugson, all in the top 10 in Canada.
“We’re all feeling good,” said Bottcher, who lost the Brier finals in 2018 and 2019. “There’s a lot of parity here and all the top half-dozen teams are more than good enough to win. We’re just trying to take care of what we need to take care of and, by all means, the more distance we can put between ourselves and some of the other teams is good.”
That said, no one is counting Jacobs out.
“They’re kind of like a grizzly bear sleeping on the floor right now and I don’t want to wake him up too much,” Bottcher’s third Darren Moulding said. “At 2-3 they really have to buckle down, but they’re capable of it. It’s just how close it is here. They’re an amazing team and they still have a chance to win it.”
It has been a brilliantly played Brier so far, with a display of shotmaking that lives up to the hype of having the top eight ranked teams in the country in the field.
On Tuesday morning it was Gunnlaugson making a double runback, double takeout to beat Prince Edward Island and in the afternoon Team Koe made a “Koe Special,” a last-rock triple to score two and beat Mcewen 3-2.
That left Alberta as the only undefeated team, with Newfoundland and Labrador, Wild Card, Canada and Saskatchewan (Matt Dunstone) all at 4-1.
Ontario’s John Epping, the second seed, lost his second straight game Tuesday afternoon, falling 6-4 to Dunstone, a 24-year-old who has been one of the big surprises of the tournament.
There’s no question Jacobs, third Marc Kennedy, second E.J. Harnden and lead Ryan Harnden comprise a fine team that has had an incredible year. They are all Olympic gold medallists and Brier winners.
But there are a lot of great teams in this Brier, curlers with similar resumes, and there are simply no easy wins when the top squads come together on the same sheet of ice.
If any combination of Koe, Jacobs, Gushue, Mcewen, Bottcher and Epping are on the ice, it’s essentially a toss-up.
Jacobs hasn’t exactly played badly. His losses have come against Gushue, Bottcher and Gunnlaugson, ranked third, fifth and seventh in the country.
All he can do is keep fighting. “As long as we’re on the schedule, we’re gonna keep playing hard,” Jacobs said.
“Everybody still feels like there’s hope, so we’ll just keep trying.”
A little bit of adversity early on at an event is not a bad thing. We’ve been a pretty resilient team all year and we welcome that, to be honest.