This is Mercury guard Diana Taurasi's final Olympic diary for The Republic. She averaged 8.5 points and 19 minutes in eight games for the gold-medal winners.

The hardware: It's amazing. The feeling on the court after the game was so much emotion. So many people have done so much for the game. It was great that it ended that way.

Let the celebration begin: The game needed to end with the ball in Dawn's (Staley) hands. That's the bottom line. She's a great leader, great person. I just picked her up because she deserved to be picked up. And it's a great feeling when you look up and see your family there.

I learned: It teaches you how teamwork eventually pays off. No matter how much you play, you don't play, it doesn't matter. The team won a gold medal and that's all that counts.

Teammate talk: Penny (Taylor) and I are great friends. I just said congratulations. Tough loss. All that aside, we didn't talk about medals.

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Olympics vs. NCAA title: Everyone wants to compare, but they're just different. You spend four years with people in college. They both mean a lot, but they're totally different. You're representing the whole country and playing against the whole world.

Drug testing: That was the toughest thing I had to do. I had to do four waters in 30 minutes, but I got it done. I had to do it two days in a row. That's not fair. I was in there with an Australian player who had to do it four games in a row. That's tough.

Back to work: Those last two weeks (of the WNBA season) are going to be tough because this past month has been a lot of travel, a lot of games, a lot of emotion.

Maria Stepanova: She's going to help us, just her size alone, her presence on the court. She was hitting the outside jumper.

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