Olympic win streak continues as Team USA sets up meeting with Australia

The quarterfinals wrapped up with a dominant defensive win by Team USA as its impressive Olympic win streak continues to climb.

Team USA stymied Nigeria, 88-74, Wednesday, Aug. 7 from the Bercy Arena in Paris. As the pursuit for an eighth straight gold medal, the country picked up a 59th consecutive Olympic win.

With two more games to win in order to reach the podium’s highest level, this year’s women’s national team must turn its attention to its semifinals matchup against Australia. That game is scheduled for Friday morning.

For the third time this summer, two-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson recorded a double-double in a United States win. In this one, she posted 20 points and 11 rebounds. Both numbers were good for the game-high in both categories while shooting 9-of-11 from the field.

Wilson scored the team’s first basket of the game before the unit ran into four straight misses from the field. Soon after, the team would settle in and push the lead to 12 points on an 8-0 run that was capped by a three-pointer from five-time gold medalist Diana Taurasi.

A quarter later Wilson was at the heart of a run to push the lead back to double-digits after Nigeria had trimmed it to four with just over five minutes left in the first half.

Fellow Las Vegas Aces player Jackie Young started her first game for Team USA and would tally 15 points on 60% from the floor.

Everybody in uniform played for head coach Cheryl Reeves and company and all would eventually find the score sheet as the team would go up by as many as 30 points. It did all of this while compiling 31 assists on 34 made field goals.

Reeves’ other two-time league MVP Breanna Stewart added 13 points with only two missed shots during her 19-plus minute outing.

Backup center Brittney Griner added 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting as part of the team’s 54% shooting night.