Serbia came into Sunday’s gold medal game as a fourth seeded team to play against the heavy favorites, USA. Serbia beat some tough opponents – Greece, Brazil, and France – to get to the Finals. However, as they had barraged their previous opponents with their incredible outside shooting, Serbia was unable to do the same against USA, losing 92-129.

Serbia started the game off strong, however. They went up 15-7 early on 7-for-7 shooting. They were getting easy layups and dunks off great execution and were drawing plenty of fouls on the US bigs. After Anthony Davis sat down with his second foul in the first quarter, DeMarcus Cousins checked in and changed the game up with his defense.

Cousins was controlling the game on defense, and Kyrie Irving got going offensively, knocking down three straight three-pointers to overcome the early 8-point deficit and put USA up by 14 points to end the first period.

From there on, USA cruised its way to a blowout victory. James Harden was also draining three-pointers early in this game. USA shot 12-of-16 from three-point land in the first half to open up a 27-point lead going into halftime.

There was not much the Serbs could do with USA shooting lights out from downtown. What’s more, Serbia was not even able to get going on the offensive end. They shot poorly from beyond the arc, and with Cousins patrolling the paint, their bigs were unable to do much damage either. All that led to a 37-point USA victory.

Serbia just shot 5-of-25 from threes as opposed to USA’s 15-of-30 shooting, good for 50 percent. USA went plus-30 from threes, and that was certainly the biggest difference in this game.

Kyrie Irving’s first half barrage spilled over to the second half as well. He finished with a game-high 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, including a perfect 6-for-6 from threes. James Harden shot efficiently too, going 8-of-11 from the field and totaling 23 points. As previously mentioned, Cousins had a huge game on the defensive end. He finished the game with 11 points and 9 rebounds.

Everyone, except for Derrick Rose, scored for USA. Others who were in double figures for USA included Klay Thompson and Kenneth Faried with 12, Rudy Gay with 11, and Stephen Curry and DeMar DeRozan with 10. Anthony Davis had a quiet game due to foul trouble as he only put in 7 points on 14 minutes of play.

The Serbians were led by Nikola Kalinic and Nemanja Bjelica’s team-high 18 points. Bogdan Bogdanovic chipped in with 15 points but shot a poor percentage. He went 5-of-17 from the field. Milos Teodosic and Miroslav Raduljica, the leading scorers for Serbia throughout the tournament, were extremely quiet in this one scoring 10 and 9 points respectively. Though, Teodosic dished out 7 assists.

Even with Cousins playing great defense down low, Serbia still outscored USA in the paint 56-40. However, USA won the rebounding battle 44-32. Surprisingly, USA only had 8 turnovers and only forced 10 from Serbia. USA’s largest lead was at 40, while Serbia’s biggest lead was 8 early in the game. USA led all but 3 minutes of this one.

USA went on to win the gold medal and for the first time, they win back-to-back FIBA World Cup gold medals. Kyrie Irving was named MVP of the 2014 FIBA World Cup. He and Kenneth Faried were named to the All-Tournament team.

Meanwhile, Serbia will go home with the silver medal. They had an amazing run as not many expected them to make it to the gold medal game to face off against USA.

And with that, the 2014 FIBA World Cup comes to an end.