The US won their 23rd match in a row at the World Championships to reinforce their status as the world's dominant force at this level.

Their match against Australia was a repeat of the final from Kaunas, Lithuania, in 2012 when they cruised to victory by more than 30 points, but it was a much closer contest this time round at the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Sports Complex.

After overcoming Spain in a thrilling semi-final, the Australians took to the basketball court still on a high and they translated that into points early on in the final, taking a 17-7 lead thanks to back-to-back three-pointers from star man Dejan Vasiljevic.

Malik Newman was in fine form for the reigning champions and landed a couple of threes himself to help the US back into the game and lead by a point at the end of the first quarter.

The Americans went on an 8-0 run to extend their lead to seven points at the halftime break leading 50-43.

Nine unanswered points early in the third quarter looked to have put the US out of reach with a 13-point advantage, but the Aussies gritted their teeth to bring that back down to five, though a late US spurt had them ahead 74-64 going into the final period.

That lead was stretched to 15 points with five minutes to go, but led by Vasiljevic and Tom Wilson the Australians hit back again with nine unanswered points to reduce the deficit to six.

With just over a minute remaining, Vasilijevic and Kuoat Noi landed three-pointers to leave the score 96-91 in America's favour, but the defending champions saw out the final few seconds to claim  a hat-trick of titles.

Malik Newman starred again for the US and picked up the tournament MVP award to go with his gold medal ©Getty Images



"Our kids hung together," said US head coach Don Showalter, who has been at the helm for all three World Championship wins.

"We had some really good play again off the bench.

"Jayson Tatum came in and did a great job for us.

"We got different help every night from our bench.

"I've always said that you put our five starters against the five starters from Australia, Serbia or Spain, it's going to be a really close game.

"But our bench, our seven guys who come off the bench is kind of what separates us, and it really did tonight."

Newman, who picked-up the tournament's most valuable player award, top-scored for the US with 21 points and was ably assisted by Jayson Tatum with 15 points, while both Harry Giles and Josh Jackson scored 13 points.

Vasiljevic was the main man for Australia with 29 points, which helped him join Newman and Diamond Stone of the US on the tournament's All-Star team along with team mate Isaac Humphries and Serbia's Nikola Rakicevic.

Serbia and Spain battled for bronze in Dubai which eventually saw the Serbs emerge with the win in a close contest ©Getty Images



Rakicevic scored 17 points to help his side beat Spain 62-59 in another exciting match to win bronze.

In a low-scoring contest the Spanish led 28-22 at the midway point, but the third quarter saw four lead changes and three ties and Serbia used a 6-0 surge to edge in front 43-42.

Spain regained the initiative again, but two three-pointers from Vanja Marinkovic helped Serbia into 59-50 lead with less than a minute to go and they held on to take the win.

In the day's classification games, Puerto Rico beat Canada 65-63 for fifth place, China overcame France 87-79 for seventh place, while Italy took ninth with a 66-62 win over Argentina.

Angola beat Greece 59-51 for 11th place, Egypt grabbed 13th place by beating Japan 68-53 and the Philippines won their first game to claim 15th place with a 115-51 win over tournament hosts United Arab Emirates.

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