U.S. locks down on defense, survives tough test vs. Spain

— -- RIO DE JANEIRO -- For the fourth successive Olympiad, Team USA has beaten Spain in the knockout portion of the men's basketball tournament, booking a spot in the gold-medal game with a 82-76 victory in Friday afternoon's semifinal.

Here's our at-the-buzzer analysis from press row at the Carioca Arena 1:

How it happened: Triple digits.

Wilt Chamberlain's stratosphere.

One hundred points.

That was the offensive target whispered within Team USA's ranks on the eve of this much-anticipated showdown with those familiar, stubborn foils from Spain.

The coaching staff was privately convinced that the Americans had to at hit least 100, as they did in the gold-medal games in both Beijing and London, to ensure victory and seal an opportunity to send Mike Krzyzewski off with one more gold in his swan song on the Team USA bench.

You can thus imagine how giddy Krzyzewski and his staff were that this group found another way -- several other ways, actually -- to get past the reigning European champions with Spain controlling tempo and keeping the score way down in the usual tense circumstances.

DeAndre Jordan started opposite Pau Gasol and had the impact game of his life, proving an undeniable force inside with 16 rebounds, four blocks and numerous changed shots while logging 27 crucial minutes of a 40-minute game because of DeMarcus Cousins' foul trouble. Klay Thompson had the hot hand offensively with a team-high 22 points. And Kyle Lowry chipped in with very solid backcourt play off the bench (nine points in 15 minutes) to help the offense when it sputtered.?

And Team USA needed it all of it.

The tournament's heavy favorites never led by more than 15 points and, truth be told, rode their 20 offensive boards and a 52-41 overall rebounding advantage -- with Jordan as the clear spark -- as much anything to finally put the Spaniards away.?

Playing on a strained right calf, Gasol led Spain with 23 points and eight rebounds of his own but simply didn't have enough help to counter the Americans' size and athleticism with brother Marc stuck at home as he continues his recovery from foot surgery.?

Juan Carlos Navarro, at 36, had a handful of turn-back-the-clock moments at Gasol's side, but Team USA's safe passage to Sunday's championship game was essentially sealed with 2:16 to go, when one of the newest Philadelphia 76ers -- Sergio Rodriguez -- had a layup nullified for pushing off on Jordan when a 3-point play could have cut Spain's deficit to six.

Given the stakes as well as the level of the competition, Team USA got off to what surely ranks as its best start of the tournament, seizing a 26-17 lead by the end of the first quarter.

The problem:? Kevin Durant?picked up his second foul with 15.3 ticks left in the period, with his third soon to follow on one of the six first-half techs dished?out by this painfully whistle-happy FIBA officiating crew.

That the lead was still six points at intermission, at 45-39, was mostly down to Thompson's first-half brilliance (17 points) and the team's 13 offensive boards, creating extra scoring chances against Spain's stingy D.

"We're dealing with talent vs. experience," Team USA's Paul George said coming in. "That's what this tournament is coming down to."

Yet that's what made the victory so satisfying for Krzyzewski & Co. Amid all that reliance on its talent, Team USA unearthed some well-timed resourcefulness to go with it to trump Spain's copious continuity and chemistry.

The streak: Make it 75 wins in a row and counting for Krzyzewski. That includes 23 consecutive victories in Olympic play, 19 in FIBA World Cup tournaments, 10 in Olympic qualifiers and another 23 in exhibition games. The Americans previously tasted defeat in the semifinals of the 2006 FIBA World Championship against Greece, then launched this streak on Sept. 2, 2006, with a 96-81 victory over Argentina in the bronze-medal game in Japan.

Play of the game: We have to glue two plays together here, with Kyrie Irving and Jordan heavily involved in both, to properly capture the moment.

Irving's lob attempt to Jordan started the bizarre sequence. The pass was too high even for Jordan's reach, but the most athletic big man in the tournament managed to bat the pass against the backboard in a fashion that Irving could corral an offensive rebound and score for a 59-50 lead.

After a stop, Irving went into one of his inimitable dribbling routines along the left wing, spinning poor Sergio Llull into total confusion before skipping along the baseline and finding Thompson with a pass in the opposite corner.

Thompson missed an off-balance 3, but Jordan emphatically slammed the ball home with a one-handed righty follow for a 61-50 lead, Team USA's biggest to that point.

(Honorable mention:? Carmelo Anthony's?flying rejection of a Ricky Rubio drive early in the second half was a play out of Jordan's locker far more than Melo's.)

Numbers game: Team USA is now 12-0 against Spain in the Olympics, its most wins against any one nation.

Durant needed only seven points to become the second-leading scoring is U.S. Olympic history behind Anthony and was thus a lock to get there, having scored in double digits in all 14 of his previous games in the Olympics.

But he was slowed by foul trouble after a fast start and had to settle for 14 points on 6-for-13 shooting, though that meant Durant was still able to give the USA Basketball scoring leaderboard yet another good shuffle:

If the Americans win Sunday's gold-medal game, they'll stretch the program's current winning streak to a record 76 games including exhibitions, besting the 75 wins in a row Team USA record starting with the Dream Team in 1992 until a loss to Argentina in the 2002 FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis.

What's next: For the 16th time in its 18 appearances in the men's Olympic basketball tournament, Team USA is in the title game.

The Americans will play Serbia in a rematch of the 2014 FIBA World Cup final in Spain after the Serbs, as the underdogs in Vegas, drubbed Australia, reversing a 15-point loss to the Aussies in group play in an 87-61 rout.

The Aussies, of course, were the first team here in Rio to expose the United States' vulnerabilities in a 98-88 defeat on Aug. 10. And now they'll have to beat Spain in Sunday morning's third-place game to win the first men's basketball medal in the country's history after reaching the semifinals three times previously (1988, 1996 and 2000) and losing the bronze-medal game each time.

The Aussies are trying to win their first Olympic? medal in basketball, having reached the semifinals three times previously (1988, 1996 and 2000) and losing the bronze-medal game each time.

"I will say this is the best chance we have of medaling," Australian legend Andrew Gaze told ESPN.com, stopping short of calling this the Boomers' strongest-ever squad. Gaze made five trips to the Olympics, three of them after NBA pros were granted eligibility to participate starting with the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.