The U.S. Women’s Curling team played their best match of the Sochi Olympics, but still came up short, losing 7–4 to the Chinese team. The U.S. squad is now 0–4 at Sochi.
The U.S. women were within a point of China until the final end, but as in earlier matches, the U.S. team missed scoring opportunities—they never scored more than a single point when they had the hammer.
Late int he final end, it looked like the U.S. might be able to steal a point and tie the match, forcing overtime, but the U.S. women were also playing against the clock: they had used up almost all of their 73 allotted minutes and had to rush strategy discussions.
After Jessica Schultz drew a shot onto the button behind two Chinese rocks to lie shot (scoring stone) vice-skip Debbie McCormack threw a dubious shot to the front of and between the two Chinese rocks, setting up a double take-out for China.
McCormack’s next shot was a draw to the button behind the Chinese stones but China’s Yin Liu knocked it out of the house.
Skip Erica Brown laid two beautiful shots behind the Chinese scoring rocks but in each case the Chinese were able to drive out the U.S. rock to score two and take the win.
After the match U.S. skip Erica brwon told NBColympics.com that the team was frustrated by its four losses.
We were looking for that win and we thought we were going to get it today,“ Brown said. ”We needed a couple of shot here and there to turn it around but ...”
Brwon admitted that a couple of ends ate up a lot of time—“there were a lot of stones in play and we were thinking pretty hard”— which put pressure on the team in the final end, but the team had played tight on time and were comfortable with it. “You have to make quick decisions and you have to live with them,” she concluded.
The U.S. women face Japan in their next match.
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