Cicero-North Syracuse’s most famous basketball figure, Breanna Stewart, has gone through international competition before. She has brought home gold medals before.
But it never meant more than it did Saturday afternoon in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when Stewart, glad to take a supporting role, helped the United States to yet another championship in women’s basketball at the Summer Olympics.
The 101-72 rout over Spain in the gold-medal game capped a perfect run through Olympic competition where Team USA won by an average margin of nearly 40 points and only trailed for 11 minutes in seven games stretched out over two weeks.
It was the Americans’ sixth consecutive Olympic gold, and it has won 49 consecutive games during that span, 48 of them by double digits. That Stewart even got on to this roster was a story unto itself.
Despite her historic accomplishments at the University of Connecticut, where she led the Huskies to four straight NCAA titles and was Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four each of those four years, Stewart was a surprise choice for Team USA.
Already armed with a full compliment of Olympic veterans and WNBA superstars, the American squad added Stewart and left out other strong players, including Candace Parker, a controversial omission.
Five of the 12 players on Team USA were UConn alums, Stewart joining Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Tina Charles on a team coached by Huskies mentor Geno Auriemma, the Hall of Fame great who also coached the Americans in 2012 when it rolled to the gold medal at the Olympics in London.
Even as an overwhelming favorite going into the Olympic tournament, Team USA took no one lightly. In the Aug. 7 opener, the Americans rolled past Senegal 121-56, and returned a day later to drop Spain 103-63, hardly imagining it would see the Spaniards again.
It got a bit more competitive in the third game of pool play Aug. 10, but again Team USA proved too much, defeating Serbia 110-84. Then, on Aug. 12, the Americans faced Canada, a team that had handed Stewart a rare defeat in international competition (though with a different roster) during the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto.
With stifling defense, Team USA handled Canada 81-51 this time around, and completed pool play two days later with a 105-62 romp over China.
In last Tuesday’s Olympic quarterfinals, the Americans allowed Japan to hang around for a short while, but pulled away again 110-64. In the course of the win, though, Sue Bird sprained a right knee capsule, and she would miss Thursday’s semifinal against France.
By far, the French game proved the most nervous of the tournament. For a half, the Americans struggled to find any kind of rhythm, and with France shooting well from the field, Team USA only led by four, 40-36, at halftime.
But a 25-8 third-quarter surge again allowed the Americans to get away. The 86-67 victory over France set up a rematch in the gold-medal game against Spain, who had needed a buzzer-beater to beat Turkey 64-62 in the quarterfinals before topping Serbia 68-54 in the semifinals.
Again, it was close in the early, the score only 27-24 in Team USA’s favor in the second quarter when Auriemma brought Stewart into the game and paired her up with the four other UConn players – Bird (back from her knee injury), Taurasi, Moore and Charles.
Stewart quickly was fouled and hit a pair of free throws. Taurasi followed with back-to-back 3-pointers, and the 16-3 run, combined with a defense that held Spain to just two baskets in the last 6:55 of the half, made it 49-32 at the break.
And it only got more lopsided from there. Stewart took just four shots in the game, but made all of them to score 11 points, including the 3-pointer in the final minute that again pushed the Americans past the century mark. She stayed on the floor as the clock ran out and, a few minutes later, had a gold medal around her neck.
For the Games, Stewart averaged 10.9 minutes on the floor, but still managed to get 8.1 points and 2.3 rebounds per game, converting on 18 of 22 free throws while recording 10 assists, five blocks and four steals. Taurasi (15.6 points) and Moore (12.0 points) were Team USA’s leading scorers, but everyone on the 12-player roster averaged at least three points per game.
With the likes of Taurasi and Bird seeing, perhaps, their last Olympic action, Stewart, along with the likes of Brittney Greiner and Elena Della Donne, are expected to lead Team USA through at least the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, where the expectations for golden dominance for the Red, White and Blue will remain the same.
