GANGNEUNG, South Korea — All around this victory-craving world, human beings in charge of human teams conduct occasional discussions or analyses or summits whenever frequency of victory is deemed insufficient. They held one such confab surrounding the outfit known as USA Curling after the Sochi Olympics of 2014, deciding that a ninth-place finish piled atop the 10th-place finish of 2010 just did not feel giddy enough. Well, of all the damnedest turns upon the ice sheets of the entire stone-conscious world, they might be about to hold some level of self-examination in Canada after these PyeongChang Olympics, and they might do it largely because of the dude the United States jettisoned after 2014, before he found his own guys and won a welcome back. That hapless little Olympic seldom-do-well, the United States, which was a dour 2-4 in round-robin play as of Sunday night, will ride its 5-3 semifinal upset of Canada on Thursday night into the first American appearance in any gold medal tussle.