Australia bow out of the Tokyo Olympic Games in the quarter-finals following a 79-55 demolition at the hands of the United States, who advance to a semi-final against Serbia in pursuit of yet another gold medal.

The Opals were held to their lowest score since the Sydney Olympics. They were comprehensively outplayed from the opening tip. Many would have expected as much after Australia barely got out of the group stage.

The messy pre-tournament exit of Liz Cambage will have done them no favours, yet one has to wonder about the impact even she would have had in Tokyo.

"We didn't really have a good preparation just with the drama and things that were happening leading into it and then obviously, Liz, who's arguably the best post player in the world, all of a sudden she's not here with us when we have built our system around her," Opals star Leilani Mitchell said.

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"So obviously it was a lot of adjusting we had to make in a few days really, and it didn't really work out for us. [We] didn't play the way we were supposed to, starting with our first game against Belgium. I don't think we were aggressive enough defensively."

US basketball star Sue Bird says the absence of Cambage would have made a major difference.

"It's totally different. It would be like if we didn't have BG [Brittney Griner]," Bird said.

"When you have players like Elizabeth Cambage, the presence, the focal point that she is, the focus we have to put on her ... the scout reports change, everything is different. It does change things.

"At the same time, for Australia, I'm not in their locker room but if you lose a player like that you have to quickly adjust, and I think that adjustment process can take some time. What you saw was a team trying to figure that out."

Mitchell posted a team-high 14 points while Eziyoda Magbegor continued her stellar rise with an impressive tournament, but the Australians were undone by 30 per cent shooting and 21 turnovers.

"Ezi's going to be the future of the Opals," Mitchell said.

"I thought she had a good campaign, but to be honest she can be so much better. There's a lot of things that she can improve, just to make her a dominant force. So the future's bright in that sense.

"I think the turnovers is something that's disappointing because we know they have size and kept throwing it over the top into their hands and didn't really make an adjustment quick enough."

For so long the US juggernaut has stood in Australia's way. In 1996, it was the USA ending Australia's gold medal hopes in a semi-final. Four years later the Opals were on home soil in Sydney, but they lost the final to the Americans. The same result followed in Athens and Beijing.

In 2012, the USA beat Australia in a semi-final. A quarter-final exit in Rio saw Australia bow out before a seemingly inevitable match against the US could happen. And now this.

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