Image Credit: Curling Canada/Michael Burns

By Victor Kaisar

At The Brier

Dunstone advances to Brier final with win over Gushue; Jacobs to play in semis

Mar 9, 2025 | 4:00 AM

KELOWNA, B.C. — Kamloops skip Matt Dunstone will play for a Brier title in Kelowna Sunday (March 9) night.

Dunstone and his Manitoba rink beat defending champion Brad Gushue’s Team Canada rink 7-4 in the Page playoff 1-2 game at Prospera Place Saturday.

Both teams routinely picked up points with the hammer in Saturday’s showdown to sit 4-4 after six ends. Dunstone scored a double in the ninth with the hammer, and then stole a single in the tenth end to pick up the win as Gushue couldn’t make a challenging double-takeout.

“I thought we had control of that game right from the get-go,” Dunstone said. “We got key forces when we needed to and then obviously the big deuce in nine. I’m really proud of the group.”

It was Dunstone’s second win over the Gushue rink in three days after he earned a come-from-behind 7-6 win to end the round-robin stage Thursday.

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“Brad Gushue is, in my opinion, the best curler of all time. He’s dominated this event for the last decade, it seems,” Dunstone said. “Those are the guys you want to be playing. Like you said, now I’m at 500 against Gushue, but I got beaten by him a lot. There was a lot of learning lessons there.”

“I felt like our strategy was a little ad hoc,” Gushue added. “It was just figuring out from rock to rock what we were going to do. We didn’t really build many ends.”

Gushue, from St. John’s, N.L., will play Brad Jacobs’ Alberta rink, which secured a semifinal berth with a 6-5 win over Manitoba’s Reid Carruthers in the Page playoff 3-4 game on Saturday.

Jacobs gave up a steal of two in the ninth and scored a single in the 10th for the win.

“We’re in a pretty good spot,” Jacobs said. “We’re giving ourselves every opportunity that we can give ourselves to try to win this thing. I’m just really confident in the guys.”

Jacobs posted an 8-0 round-robin record. His only loss at the competition was a 7-4 decision to Gushue in Friday’s early qualifier, which was followed by a 10-6 win over Nova Scotia’s Owen Purcell in the evening qualifier.

Carruthers, who was 6-2 in round-robin play, qualified with a 6-4 win over Saskatchewan’s Mike McEwen a day earlier. He said a few “half-shots” impacted his team’s performance against Jacobs.

“It’s obviously disappointing losing,” Carruthers said. “But we lost to a great team and there’s a lot to be proud of. We had a hell of a week.”

Gushue is looking to win the national men’s curling championship for a record fourth straight time and seventh overall. He beat Dunstone, then curling for Saskatchewan, in a semi-final in 2020 and followed that up with wins in the Page 1-2 game and the final in 2023.

Jacobs, whose lone Brier title came in 2013, joined Kennedy, second Brett Gallant and lead Ben Hebert after the team parted ways with Brendan Bottcher. Jacobs entered play ranked second in Canada, just ahead of McEwen and Gushue.

“We’re trying to build a team that can beat the best teams in the country and the world,” Kennedy said. “We’ve had a really good season.”

Bottcher has thrown fourth stones for most of his career but moved to second when he joined Gushue’s side last fall. He replaced E.J. Harnden, who’s throwing second stones for Dunstone.

Dunstone, who also won a bronze in 2021, will aim to be golden for the first time in Sunday’s final, which gets underway at 5:00 p.m.

– With files from The Canadian Press