US women's basketball team is solely focused on winning Olympic gold

The friendly warmup games are over. Now the U.S. women's basketball team has to deal with the pressure of history.

Led by two-time WNBA MVPs A'ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, the U.S. starts its quest at the Paris Games for an unprecedented eighth straight gold medal on a 55-game Olympic winning streak for a program that hasn't lost since 1992 in Barcelona.

There's also Diana Taurasi, 42, who will be going for a sixth gold medal. She isn't focused on the big picture of what the U.S. has accomplished over the last three decades in the Olympics; her eyes are fixed solely on getting another gold in Paris.

"It doesn't matter what the history is, it doesn't affect this team or this Olympics," she said. "We find a way to find our own identity as a team on and off the court. Those last eight don't promise you anything going forward. That's the mindset we've always taken."

The team is trying to break a tie with the U.S. men's basketball team for the most consecutive gold medals. The men won seven straight from 1936-68.

The women open play against Japan on Monday. The two teams met in the gold-medal game in Tokyo three years ago and the U.S. came away with a 90-75 victory. The U.S. also has Olympic newcomers Germany and Belgium in its group.

"There [are] so many good teams and everyone's level has raised in the last two or three Olympics," Taurasi said. "You see the investment in women's sports, and it pays off on the court. So that's promising to see."

The Americans won by an average of 16 points at the Tokyo Games. That was their smallest margin of victory since the gold-medal streak started at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

They've had little practice time since the team was put together in June. They had three days in Phoenix during