BEIJING At some point in this men's basketball competition at the Beijing Olympics, nearly every player on the U.S. team has seized a moment for his own.

If you're Argentina, that has to make you nervous.

Not every U.S. player has had his turn.

Kobe Bryant's moment came Wednesday night as he scored 25 points with four 3-pointers, lifting the U.S. to a 116-85 victory against Australia and a spot in Friday's semifinals against Argentina.

The U.S.-Argentina game will be a rematch of the 2004 Athens Games semifinal when the U.S. famously took a bad turn and Argentina's Manu Ginobili became a national hero by sending the U.S. into the loser's bracket en route to an Argentinian gold.

“We want to play the best, the defending champs,” Bryant said. “There is a sense of pride that comes from beating the champs.”

The Americans have sought out and destroyed every other historical boogeyman lurking in these Olympics to arrive here, two victories from a gold medal.

Ginobili said everything is different now.

“We know we were a different team four years ago and they were a different team,” the San Antonio Spurs star said after he and Carlos Delfino combined for 11 3-pointers and 47 points, to hold off Greece 80-78 in their quarterfinal game.

The Americans mostly couldn't take their eyes off the TV monitors, watching the opening moments to the Argentina-Greece game, during interviews after their victory Wednesday.

The U.S. didn't let their forward-charging pace waver on Wednesday though it had to hit a few threes early to force the Australians out of their zone defense.

The U.S. picked up all the steam it would need when Bryant scored 17 of the Americans' 36 points during an 11-minute stretch where they went from a 33-30 lead in the second quarter to a 69-43 lead with 6minutes, 36seconds left in the third.

The Americans have been salivating for a chance to redeem themselves in this Olympics, specifically against Argentina.

LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Carlos Boozer played on that 2004 U.S. team that lost in the Olympic semifinals and set in motion the three-year effort to revamp USA Basketball.

The game will feature the top two-ranked teams in the FIBA rankings: The U.S. is No.1; Argentina is second.

“(The Americans) are playing better, with more aggressiveness, with more respect to the rest of the world,” said Ginobili. “And they have an athletic ability that has no comparison. It will be really tough but we gotta play so we better do it right.”