MADRID (AP) — Kyrie Irving made all six 3-pointers and scored 26 points, and the U.S. repeated as world champion for the first time by crushing Serbia 129-92 on Sunday in the Basketball World Cup.

James Harden added 23 for the Americans, who made 11 of 16 3-pointers in a sensational-shooting first half, adding one final romp to a tournament full of them.

This depleted team that was supposedly weak enough to lose was too good to be touched.

The Americans were supposed to have All-Star forwards Kevin Durant, Kevin Love and Blake Griffin, who all informed USA Basketball not long before the tournament that they would be unavailable.

But Irving and Harden stuck around, and despite sending the youngest U.S. team since NBA players debuted in 1992, the Americans remained as dominant as ever.

They have won 63 straight games — 45 in official FIBA events and 18 in exhibition play — and are automatically qualified for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

MADRID (AP) — After a difficult summer, the Basketball World Cup has been pretty easy for the U.S.

No games have been close in the final minutes, and only one was even competitive entering the final period. This depleted team that was supposed to be vulnerable has instead been invincible.

The Americans believe that tough game is coming Sunday — and so does Serbia, their opponent.

“They have supreme confidence and just that expectation, I think, that they feel like they’re going to win,” U.S. guard Stephen Curry said, “and we have that same mentality as well.”

Serbia is the only team left that can stop the Americans from repeating as world champions, looking to regain a title that’s meant so much in its basketball history.

“They are great, good team, but for sure we won’t go inside the game to lose,” Serbian guard Milos Teodosic said.

The Americans were supposed to be here, though the road to the final was expected to be tougher once Kevin Durant, Kevin Love and Blake Griffin withdrew, and Paul George broke his right leg. But the opponent is a surprise.

The Serbians barely qualified for the 24-team field as the seventh-place finisher in last year’s European championship. They were only 2-3 in the group stage, advancing as the fourth and final team from the powerful Group A, but have peaked since the games became win or go home.

A 90-72 rout of previously unbeaten Greece in the round of 16 was followed by an 84-56 victory over Brazil in the quarterfinals. Then the Serbians built a huge lead and held on Friday for a 90-85 victory over France, which had beat then in the group stage and knocked out tournament co-favorite Spain in the quarters.

“They’re just playing great basketball right now and actually it’s beautiful to see. I hope I don’t see that beauty tomorrow night,” U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “But they’ve been playing lights-out basketball.”

The Americans have been more dominant, averaging 101.5 points and winning by 32.5 per game. Their last two games had single-digit margins at halftime, and yet they ended up winning both by a combined 71 points.

“I cannot say we’re going to win against the U.S, but I’m sure we’re going to give all our best and try to fight, but it’s going to be hard for sure,” said former NBA center Nenad Krstic.

The Americans have never repeated as world champions. The last team to win titles consecutively was Yugoslavia in 1998 and 2002.

Krstic remembers cheering for his country mates during the latter game, held in the United States, at a gas station with his club team that was on a bus at the time. It was the last of a record five world titles won by Yugoslavia when Serbia competed as part of that nation.

The Serbians have retained that basketball passion since competing under their own flag — Curry played on the U.S. team that lost to host Serbia in the championship game of the 2007 under-19 tournament.

“It’s tough winning silver that game, so hopefully we can be on the other side of it this time around,” Curry said.

Serbia is already guaranteed its first medal at the senior level. The Serbians — whose Olympic committee president is former NBA center Vlade Divac — finished fourth in 2010.

“It means a lot because we are a basketball country,” Krstic said. “Lots of people, whole country watch this game.”

The Americans say it’s just as important to them, especially after all the adversity they faced before the games began. USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo has said a gold medal would be the sweetest one since he took over the program in 2005, since it seemed so in doubt as big name after big name passed on the trip to Spain.

“It’s everything for us,” U.S. forward James Harden said. “We came here with one thing on our mind, that’s to win the gold medal. We came this far, doing an excellent job this far in this tournament. So one more game to complete our mission.”

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — James Harden and the U.S. sprinted into the championship game of the Basketball World Cup, riding a huge third quarter to a 96-68 victory over Lithuania on Thursday night.

Harden scored all of his 16 points in the lopsided third quarter of a near carbon copy of the Americans’ quarterfinal victory over Slovenia, when he awoke from a scoreless first half to help turn a close game into a blowout in a split second.

The Americans will travel to Madrid to face France or Serbia on Sunday as they try to repeat as world champions for the first time.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Klay Thompson scored 20 points and James Harden had 12 of his 14 in the third quarter after a scoreless first half, helping the U.S. national team turn a close game into a 119-76 rout of Slovenia on Tuesday in the quarterfinals of the Basketball World Cup.

Kenneth Faried also had 14 for the Americans, who will play Lithuania on Thursday in Barcelona for a spot in Sunday’s gold-medal game in Madrid. Lithuania beat Turkey 73-61 earlier Tuesday.

Derrick Rose finished with 12 points after coming into the game shooting 8 for 37 in the World Cup.

Goran Dragic of the Phoenix Suns lead Slovenia with 13 points.

The Americans led by only five points early in the third quarter before tearing off a 27-10 run. Harden and Stephen Curry finally got going after the All-Stars combined to miss all 12 shots in the first half.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The ball was bouncing away, threatening New Zealand’s last-chance possession, though if a player could just dive on the floor and corral it, any NBA fan would know what to do.

CALL TIMEOUT!

Nope. Couldn’t.

That’s not allowed in the international game.

It is acceptable for trying to win to be secondary to losing close — but better not be too blatant if your priority isn’t winning at all.

Turkey trailed by six in the final minute of another contest, and when its opponent inbounded the ball, surely the Turkish bench would scream out the obvious instruction.

FOUL!

Nope. Wouldn’t.

Welcome to basketball, international style. Same name, not quite the same game as in America. Not in the way the sport is played, officiated, or strategized.

“It’s similar, but in anything, you take something from the East Coast to the West Coast in the United States, it’s a little bit different,” U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

Being a successful coach in international tournaments requires more than just a good playbook. Sometimes it takes a good calculator.

Mike Fratello learned that the hard way.

In his first tournament coaching Ukraine in 2011, his team was eliminated by a point differential tiebreaker. So the longtime NBA coach wasn’t particularly surprised when Turkey opted not to foul in the last 30 seconds of its first-round matchup with the Ukrainians, settling for a six-point loss rather than try to prolong the game and risk losing by eight.

“We know from our first year that we did not advance to the next round because of point differential,” Fratello said. “We were tied with two other teams, Georgia, ourselves and Bulgaria, the three of us tied with 2-3 records. Georgia moved on because of point differential. So it’s huge here, it really is.”

Unfortunately for the TV analyst known as the “Czar of the Telestrator,” Fratello still isn’t a math major. His squad was again ousted on point differential even more painfully, falling short by one point.

Lose close, lose big, whatever. Sometimes, all that matters is losing.

Teams seem more than willing to tank games — to purposely lose — for what coaches feel would be a more favorable matchup.

Spain appeared to do it against Brazil in the 2012 Olympics, moving the Spanish to the other half of the bracket so they didn’t get the Americans until the gold-medal game.

And that seemed the mission for Australia in its final game of group play against Angola, when the Australians rested regulars, played defense with the intensity of a Spanish siesta, and blew a big lead in falling 91-83. That dropped them out of position to face the U.S. until the semifinals, with an intent that looked so obvious that FIBA has launched an investigation.

When it happened, Slovenia’s Goran Dragic of the Phoenix Suns blasted them on Twitter. But despite his anger, the Slovenians eventually blamed themselves for not double-checking their path and their math.

“Like I said, this is our fault. Other team, they calculate, we didn’t,” said Dragic’s brother, Zoran.

As for the game itself, there are other differences:

— The FIBA version is shorter than the NBA’s by eight minutes, with a closer 3-point line and a different ball.

— Only coaches can call timeouts — U.S. guard Kyrie Irving forgot that in an earlier game — and only when the ball isn’t live, negating the ability to regroup if a possession is going poorly.

— Traveling calls. Americans get whistled for the violation plenty in international competition, either because they’re too slow to adapt to the way referees see it, or too quick for the officials to think their moves are legal.

Some changes have been made to bring the games together — the FIBA key that was formerly a trapezoid is now also rectangular. NBA president Rod Thorn said there have been discussions for decades about how to adopt a universal set of rules, like soccer.

“What we found over the course of time, even though we’ve still gotten a lot closer, is that it was so hard for them to change certain things because of all the different federations … that they have,” Thorn said. “They’ve been doing things a certain way for so long they didn’t want to change, and it was just much more difficult — a lot of their federations had no money, couldn’t institute changes that cost anything.”

NBA owners have resisted some change, too.

One of the most notable rules they oppose is the international game allows defensive players to swipe the ball off the rim, which in America is basket interference. Thorn said the 3-point arc was moved in at one point, but league officials felt it was too close.

Still, the games are much more similar than when NBA teams competed in the former McDonald’s Open tournaments in the late 1980s. The games were so different that Thorn said they were officiated under a mixture of rules, rather than require the international clubs to learn the NBA’s illegal defense rules.

He represents the U.S. on a committee that meets annually with FIBA rules officials to discuss further changes to the game. But there may never be a uniform one.

“I don’t know if it’ll get to be the same,” Thorn said, “but I think it’ll continue to get closer.”