Team USA ends group play with its 58th straight Olympic victory – and it was dominant

VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France – Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve is no stranger to dynasties. From 2011 to 2017, her Minnesota Lynx won four WNBA championships. And at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where Reeve was an assistant, four of her players played key roles for the gold medal squad.

So it’s probably a pretty comforting — and in a way, familiar — feeling for Reeve to look down from her couch in France right now and see four starters for the Las Vegas Aces, the defending two-time WNBA champions.

On Sunday night, it was a core of the most dominant WNBA team in recent memory — go figure — that propelled Team USA to an 87-68 victory over Germany in the team’s final group game.

For the first 15 minutes the game was fairly even (Germany even led after the first quarter), but halfway through the second quarter – just a minute after Team USA had taken its first lead of the game with an Alyssa layup Thomas – reeve Reeve placed A’ja Wilson on the floor, where she joined Aces guards Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young. With the Aces core on the floor, Team USA closed the first half with a 17-7 run.

Again, in the third quarter, midway through, a Plum-Young substitution (with Wilson already on the ground) provided immediate offensive energy for Team USA, as the team – which had allowed Germany to cut the lead to 10 – the third quarter ended on a 20-7 run.

It was a particularly effective night for Young, who finished with a team-high 19 points on 7-for-13 shooting, including 5-for-8 from behind the arc. Through the first two games, Young had played a total of just over twenty minutes and attempted only one shot: a three-pointer against Japan in the opener. Her success from behind the arc is especially important for Team USA, as the group has struggled from range throughout the tournament, excluding Young’s performance against Germany, Team USA shot just 23.6 percent from beyond the arc through the group stage matches.

Geno Auriemma, head coach of the 2016 team with four Lynx players, knows the benefits of the chemistry Team USA currently enjoys with its Aces.

“Any time you have a group of players who have played together and won together and have great chemistry, that’s invaluable to a coach and to a team that doesn’t have a lot of practice time to prepare,” he said. “As individuals, Sylvia Fowles, Seimone Augustus, Maya Moore and Lindsay Whalen were just wonderful to be with.”

Team USA finished group play with a 3-0 record. With Australia ruining the host nation’s hopes of an undefeated run, the US will enter the knockout game as the No. 1 seed. Team USA’s quarterfinals are Wednesday and continue their quest for an eighth straight Olympic gold medal, dating back to the 1992 Barcelona Games.

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(Photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images)