Road to a Curling Medal for Team USA

Here's the results for the round-robin curling schedule.

Only 4 teams advance to the playoffs. The top three in yellow, plus one of the teams in green after facing off in a tiebreaker match. 

So the USA advanced to the playoff with a 5-4 record. Cool, right? How'd they do that?

After 6 games, Team USA was 2-4.  They'd beaten South Korea and Denmark, but lost to Italy, Sweden, Japan and Norway. 

Their remaining three games: Canada, Switzerland, Great Britain. To make the playoffs, they'd have to win all three games against teams with better records. 

On Monday, USA was 2-4, Canada 4-2. Going into the 9th, it was 5-5 with USA holding the hammer. The final shot of the 9th, was a nice bump that scored two for the USA. 7-5. In the 10th, Canada comes up with their own double and ties it up, 7-7. Free curling! 

Here's where Canada's last yellow stone ends up:

So to win, USA needs to knock out the yellow stone. To do that they have to get by the yellow guard at the top of the screen. Here comes the shot...

Shuster screams for sweeping as soon as he lets it go. The announcer says, "Panic."

It crosses the hog line and is coming really close to the yellow guard. Can it get past it?

Yes! It narrowly passes the guard...

Here it is making contact with the yellow stone...

Perfect shot. Knocks the yellow one out, scores 2, for an overtime 9-7 win. All of that just to get to 3-4 and knock Canada back to 4-3. Both USA and Canada would win their next two games. 

In the semis, USA would face Canada again, and again take them down.