The Australian Opals will play for the bronze medal against host nation Turkey at the FIBA women's world championships on Monday morning.
The Opals lost their semi final against gold medal favourites USA 82-70 on Sunday morning with the USA now playing Spain in the championship
game, also on Monday morning.
Spain beat Turkey 66-56 in the earlier semi final.
Opals guard Erin Phillips led her side with 19 points while centre Marianna Tolo was excellent against USA star Brittany Griner scoring 10 points and forcing Griner to foul out of the game midway through the fourth quarter.
Yet the Opals will feel a little disappointment at missing a number of open shots, especially in the second half when there was chances to drop the USA's lead back to a couple of baskets.
So often the USA turned the Opals' miss into a transition basket at the other end.
USA power forward Tina Charles was too strong for the Opals scoring 18 points and while Maya Moore scored 16 points and guard Diana Taurasi scored 11 points.
Opals captain Penny Taylor was restricted to just eight points in 21 minutes due to foul trouble and her absence hurt the Opals, especially at the offensive end.
Dual Australian-American citizen Leilani Mitchell was strong off the bench for the Opals scoring nine points in 19 minutes while bench players Cayla Francis and Natalie Burton also gave the team a boost with their physical play.
The injury absences of Lauren Jackson and Liz Cambage finally caught up with the Opals who had won all their matches up to the semi final but lacked the star quality of their twin towers, especially at the offensive end when their jump shots weren't falling.
The USA also dominated the rebound count with a 49-31 advantage.
Opals coach Brendan Joyce said he was proud of his side's fight and the team now had to turn it's attention to the bronze medal game.
"I'm proud of the girls, our goal was to make the final four and give it our best shot - we definitely did that," Joyce said.
"Penny getting in foul trouble early hurt really restricted her but we still made runs and stuck to it.
"To lose by 12 points is respectable but we have high expectations of our team and now we have to get ready to play tomorrow.
"I thought our defence was pretty good but at times we had those scoring droughts which hurt us - we had some good open looks but couldn't knock them down."
Taylor said the Opals could be proud of their performance but were also hurting after again losing to USA in international competition.
"I've lost to this team a few times now and we have to learn from it and get ready for the bronze medal game tomorrow," Taylor said.
The Opals played Turkey in Turkey during their pre-tournament tour of Europe and that experience should be prove vital as the home side has received a major boost from their passionate home crowd throughout the tournament.
But Spain showed in their semi final win against Turkey that it was possible to beat the home side so the Opals will look to follow their lead into the bronze medal game.
"The positive side is we visited here a few weeks ago because I thought Turkey would be tough," Joyce said.
"We have an opportunity to win a bronze medal, we have to re-group.
"We can't focus on what's going on around us [in the crowd], we have to work out the best possible way to win that game."
The Opals will play Turkey in the bronze medal game on Monday morning at 3am - ABC2 is expected to show the game but have yet to say if it will be live or shown on delay.
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