After the conclusion of the All-Star weekend, Team USA will now enter the Olympic Games set to tip off in Paris on July 26. The winners of the past seven Olympic gold medals want to maintain their gold-winning streak. This streak began in 1996, the last time the Summer Olympics were held in the US. As a result, Team USA remains the overwhelming favorite among 11 other teams that have qualified for the Paris Olympics.

With that being said, let’s dig into the details of this year’s international tournament and which team will USA faceoff in the very first game of this quadrennial competition.

Team USA will tip off their Olympic campaign with a game against Japan

Team USA will face Japan on July 29 in their first matchup in Pierre Mauroy Stadium, Lille, Villeneuve d’ASCQ (approximately 140 miles north of Paris), France at 3 p.m. ET. There is a lot of history between these two teams.

The first time they locked horns was at the 1975 World Championship for Women when Japan took away a 73-71 victory under USA’s feet. The next year, Team Japan again came after Team USA in the 1976 Olympics’ final phase and limited the USA to their previous score while it kept the lead and took an 84-71 win.

But Team USA knew how to turn the tables memorably. In the final phase of the 1979 World Championship for Women, the USA kept Japan to only 65 points while they won by 19 points and brought home one of their 11 World Cup gold medals. They have never looked back ever since.

And then in 1996, came the United States Women’s Dream Team which included basketball legends, Teresa Edwards, Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Rebecca Lobo, and Carla McGhee, among others, and defeated Japan with a 108-93 score while they headed towards their third Olympic gold medal.

“We didn’t really have those profound conversations. It was OK then to not feel the weight of the world on your shoulders. We were task-oriented. But when you grow and remove yourself from that time, you do have those conversations now. It is cool to have been part of the evolution of a sport,” Dawn Staley had once stated about Team USA’s 1996 Olympic victory.

As a result, in their next encounter in the 1998 World Cup, Team USA knocked Japan out in the preliminary round with a 95-89 win. Almost two decades later, the USA and Japan again crossed paths at the 2016 Olympics, where they added another victory over Japan, pushing it out of the race in the quarterfinals.

This brings us to the last tournament in which the USA and Japan went head-to-head. First, it was in the group phase when Team USA beat Team Japan 86-69, and the second time came around in the finals where the USA landed an even bigger punch of 90 points over Japan and took the gold away. This leads to the head-to-head record of 6 wins and 2 losses against Japan.

Now for Team USA’s first game, basketball enthusiasts can catch the game on USA Network on TV and stream live on Peacock and NBC Olympics.com, NBC.com, NBC app, and NBC Olympics app from Monday, July 29. Talking about the tickets, they are officially being sold for 24 euros apiece for this game. However, Team USA has other tough nuts to crack in the group-stage games. Let’s find out more.

Team USA to face strong opponents at the Olympics

Being placed in Group C, Team USA will be facing Belgium and Germany as its opponents other than Japan. Following this format, Team Germany will compete against Belgium before the USA and Japan’s face-off on Monday, July 29th. Then on August 1, Japan will compete with Germany while Belgium will compete with the USA on August 2. Then on Sunday, August 4, Japan will compete with Belgium, followed by Germany’s matchup against the USA.

But they aren’t coming with a shorthand. This year, USA Basketball opted to put together a team of seasoned players to participate in Paris including notable league veterans like A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner, Alyssa Thomas, Napheesa Collier, Jackie Young, Kelsey Plum, Jewell Loyd, Sabrina Ionescu, Chelsea Gray, and Kahleah Copper.

Diana Taurasi, WNBA’s White Mamba, is aiming for her 6th consecutive gold medal. Taurasi, who is tied with WNBA legend Sue Bird for most Olympic gold medals at five, has the chance to move ahead of Bird. More so, out of these 12 players, 7 have already appeared on Team USA before including Collier, Gray, Griner, Loyd, Stewart, Taurasi, and Wilson, and with two more on the 3×3 team in the previous Olympic Games.

Stay tuned for more such updates and join us for the exciting pilot episode of the “Dual Threat Show” as our host BG12 sits down with Georgia Bulldogs star and SEC All-Freshman Team Selection, Silas Demary Jr.