The decision of who will represent the territories at the Halifax Brier went to a tiebreaker yesterday evening, after a weekend of hard-fought curling.

Going into Monday morning's games, Team Koe of N.W.T. held the tournament lead with three wins and no losses, while the Yukon's Team Cowan was in second with two wins and one loss. But the war was not won for skip Jaime Koe and his team. Their first match against bottom-ranked Team Solberg did not go as planned.

"Every time we thought we had it under control, we'd play that Jonny Solberg team,” Koe said. "They cleaned us up a couple of times.”

By the end of Tuesday morning's matches, Team Koe had two losses on the board, both thanks to Team Solberg, which won 8-4 in the first match-up against Koe and 8-7 in the second.

"Its always good to play those tight games,” Koe said.

In the meantime, however, Koe managed to chalk up another point on the standings board with a 7-4 win over Team Cowan. It did not bode well for Chad Cowan's team, which had already suffered a 9-3 loss at Koe's hands earlier in the tournament.

But it was still a tough game to call going in to the tiebreaker on Tuesday afternoon. Team Koe had proven its supremacy over Team Cowan, but Team Cowan had handily beaten the team which gave Koe so much trouble.

"We felt good going into the last game,” Team Cowan's third James Buyck said this morning. "The pressure was on them (but) he hardly missed. He made those critical shots when he needed to, a couple times we had him in a tight spot but he always managed to get the right shot at the right time.”

By the beginning of the sixth end, Team Koe was confident with a two-point lead and came out with an aggressive strategy to keep Team Cowan's rocks out of the house, even at the expense of his own points. Koe notched one more point in the sixth end, then embarked on a war of attrition against Cowan's stones.

"In the end, our strategy was just to knock the rocks around and keep them out of there,” Koe said of the next two ends, which saw no scoring for either team, but a lot of action as Koe repeatedly emptied the house with hard, straight shots down the centre of the sheet.

Team Cowan managed to put another point up in the ninth end, but it wasn't enough to overtake the N.W.T. curlers.

With one rock left toward the end of the 10th, Team Cowan had to admit defeat, there being no way to cover the point spread.

"We basically ran out of rocks,” Buyck said.

"It was a great event – really good competition – and we lost to a really strong team. Most of the games were close, but we just came up a bit short in the end.”

After a total of 13 ends played over the tournament, Koe lead the board with a 5-2 record, followed by Team Cowan with four wins and three losses, then Team Solberg with an even record of 3-3. The Northwest

Territories Team Skauge brought up the rear with one win and five losses.

Now Koe, along with his third Kevin Whitehead, second Brad Chorostowski and lead Martin Gavin; is headed to Nova Scotia for the Tim Hortons Brier. Koe has played the Tim Hortons Brier in the past, but this year will be special he said, because he'll be there with his brother, Kevin, who is representing Alberta.

"It'll be exciting to share that with him,” Koe said. "I'm pretty ecstatic about it.”

The match-up will mark just the third time in Brier history when two brothers have faced off against each other.

This will be Koe's fourth Tim Hortons Brier, and although he has always made the top 10, he hasn't made it to the podium yet.

"We have a lot of work to do, but we have a month to do it,” Koe said. "We're going be working hard until we get there.”

Chorostowski is the Brier veteran on the team, with five Canadian men's curling championships under his belt.

The Tim Hortons Brier in Halifax starts March 6 and runs to March 14.