The Australia men's basketball team exceeded expectations on Wednesday evening, giving Team USA all they could handle before taking a slim 99-89 defeat. Most pundits assumed that the Americans would cruise along to their third consecutive gold medal, especially with their primary adversary in the past, Spain, sputtering at the start of the games. It appears that they have a new nemesis to deal with in the Aussies.

Australia actually held the lead for a large portion of the game, and even as the final minutes approached, they were within single digits. Carmelo Anthony‘s red-hot shooting from outside and some clutch jumpers from Kyrie Irving ended up providing the knockout blow, but it easily could've gone the other way.

Afterward, most Australians were proud of the team's effort. Just giving U.S.A. that big of a scare seemed like a win in itself.

Don't say that to Andrew Bogut, though. The (now) Dallas Mavericks center refused to be satisfied with the result.

From Michael Lee of The Vertical:

“Everybody gets birthday cake like it’s the best day ever,” Bogut joked about the previous mindset after Australia lost 98-88 at Carioca Arena 1. “We’re disappointed. We lost. We’re not going to take small, moral victories.”

This is not an uncommon mentality in competitive sports at the highest level. If your goal is truly to win the gold, you can't take satisfaction in anything that doesn't result in a victory.

Even if the rest of the world doesn't believe that's possible, the players on Australia do. That belief is necessary if they're going to pull off the miraculous.

Sure, a few months down the road, the Australian players can look back positively at their effort and the fact that they nearly shocked the Americans. But it's not the time for that right now.

Bogut continued:

“No disrespect to the U.S., but we don’t want to go into an Olympics aiming for second, or fourth,” Bogut said. “We should go in with the mindset that we’re going to be first and they beat you, they beat you. But we’re not disrespecting anybody by saying that. We have a goal of being first. We have a goal of trying to be there in the end. What’s the point of playing otherwise?

No argument here.