BARCELONA, Spain -- What began as a 24-team field is down to 16. So it's time for the internationally known Power Rankings committee (of one) to weigh in with one more FIBA Basketball World Cup edition as the single-elimination portion of the tournament begins this weekend.

One week removed from our pre-tournament FIBA World Cup rankings, here's how they stack up now from No. 1 to No. 24 ...

1. SPAIN (Last Ranking: 2)

I'm still picking the United States to beat the Spaniards in the Sept. 14 title game in Madrid. But if we're doing Power Rankings based on what we saw in pool play, Spain has played better basketball than anyone through five games -- including the Yanks. The hosts have size, shooting, playmaking, better perimeter defending than you think (with Ricky Rubio and Sergio Llull) and, yes, a legit home-court advantage. They also went 5-0 in Group A by their own gaudy 25.2-point average margin of victory, which includes spankings of Brazil (by 19) and France (24). The Gasol Brothers and their pals rightfully deserve the top spot as we move into the one-and-done phase.

2. UNITED STATES (LR: 1)

Have to be objective here. ‎Team USA is not quite a team yet. This group has played only eight games together, counting exhibitions, with that championship game looming against a team in the truest sense. I repeat: I still think Team USA, as Ukraine coach Mike Fratello suggested Thursday, is going to come at Spain with a level of defensive ferocity and hunger that the Kings of Europe won't see anywhere else. I assure you there will be no flat start in that one from the Americans. Yet the fact remains that, in spite of that healthy average margin of victory (33.2 PPG) through its first five games, Team USA's guard play has been spotty and a leader hasn't really emerged for this group. There is work to be done before the final.

3. BRAZIL (LR: 3)

Don't think there's any question, based purely on talent, that Brazil is the third-best team here. But to finally reach the semifinals of a major competition for the first time in the Nene/Varejao/Barbosa Era, they'll have to beat their old enemies from Argentina in a Round of 16 steel-cager, and then the Greece-Serbia winner in the quarters. It's certainly doable, but it'll also be highly emotional no matter who Argentina has missing. It's the matchup of the round ... by several kilometers.

4. GREECE (LR: 5)

I was higher than most on the Greeks, as evidenced by the fact they snuck into a top-five slot in the pre-tournament rankings, but the big names France and Argentina are both missing was as much a factor for the high placement as anything. To its credit, though, Greece capitalized on Argentina's weakened roster and the overall welcoming nature of Group B to join Spain and the United States on the short list of teams that went unbeaten in pool play. Don't get carried away, though: Greece would have to beat Serbia and then the Brazil-Argentina winner to get to Spain in the semifinals. P.S. Everyone's favorite Greek Freak -- Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo -- has been forced to settle for backup minutes behind new Houston Rockets signee Kostas Papanikolaou.

5. FRANCE (LR: 4)

I'm afraid nothing has changed since our pre-tournament musings. ‎As I watched Boris Diaw and Nicolas Batum and coach Vincent Collet scuffle to a 3-2 mark in the Group of Death with Spain and Brazil, all I could think was What if? How much tastier would the later rounds of this tournament have been if Tony Parker and Joakim Noah were still playing for Les Bleus after France's breakthrough last summer to win EuroBasket 2013?

6. LITHUANIA (LR: 8)

Quite an effort from Lithuania to win Group D after losing the one guy they seemingly couldn't afford to lose in Mantas Kalnietis. The Lithuanians overcame the emotional hit of seeing their point guard go down just days before the tournament started by smothering Slovenia in the fourth quarter Thursday night to leapfrog Goran Dragic and Co. and finish first in the pool. And just as Australia took the controversial way by essentially surrendering its final group game to Angola, Lithuania has thus delayed its earliest meeting with Team USA until the semis. Turkey or those aforementioned Aussies await in the quarterfinals if the squad led by Jonas Valanciunas can beat New Zealand on Sunday.

7. TURKEY (LR: 13)

The truth? Outside of those brilliant three quarters against Team USA -- which were worth several bonus points with the committee -- Turkey was also underwhelming for long spells in its first five games. The Turks lost to Ukraine and were fortunate to eke out wins over New Zealand and Finland when you'd have expected them to comfortably go 4-1 considering how they looked against the Americans. ‎Yet it also wouldn't surprise me a bit to see them in the semis next Thursday in a rematch with Team USA, which would put Ergin Ataman and his box-office coaching style back in the American hoops spotlight one more time. With Omer Asik looking as good as he has in ages, ranking the Turks this high in essence is a show of faith that they'll find some consistency in Barcelona.

8. ARGENTINA (LR: 9)

I thought they had enough to win Group B even without Manu Ginobili and Carlos Delfino. I'm even more confident that the Argentineans' Round of 16 battle Sunday with Brazil will be a nasty slugfest, because that's the only possible outcome when those nations meet. Brazil, at full strength, will be narrowly favored to avenge its loss to Manu & Co. in the quarterfinals of the 2012 London Olympics, but you can rest assured Luis Scola will do everything in his power to hold the Brazilians off one last time after averaging 21.6 points (second in the tournament to date) and 8.8 boards (sixth) in Argentina's five group games. (I'm also, for the record, irrationally excited about the Facundo Campazzo versus Marcelinho Huertas skirmishes.)

9. SERBIA (LR: 6)

Landing in the toughest of the four groups actually worked out OK for Serbia, which was always destined to finish no higher than fourth in Group A, but will profit now from the softness of Group B. It was by far the weakest pool of the four, but you won't hear Serbia complaining that much about a Round of 16 match with Group B winner Greece. Guard Milos Teodosic and big man Miroslav Raduljica -- who has played well enough, I'm told, to force NBA teams to start tracking him again -- are the names to watch.

10. SLOVENIA (LR: 7)

Slovenia was a quarter away from going 5-0 in Group D before a total offensive meltdown handed first place in the pool to Lithuania. Can the Dragic Brothers and their teammates rebound mentally from that disappointment ‎to beat the plucky Dominicans in Saturday night's Round of 16? The problem, even if they do, is that they'd now have to face Team USA in the quarterfinals -- one round shy of the medal round -- after already losing to the Yanks by 30 in the teams' exhibition game 11 days ago in Gran Canaria.

11. AUSTRALIA (LR: 11)

The hysteria that followed Australia's decision to essentially tank its way to third place in Group D and thus dodge Team USA until the semifinals at the earliest is actually mild compared to what we saw at the London Olympics. Or have you already forgotten France's Nicolas Batum lashing out and punching Juan Carlos Navarro in the groin ‎after Spain was perceived to have lost a group game to Brazil on purpose so it could avoid Team USA until the gold-medal game? The point: Strategic tanking happens in FIBA and has happened for years. Of greater concern to folks back home and specifically Jazz fans: Dante Exum is indeed playing only sparingly with the Aussies -- despite the injury absences of Andrew Bogut and Patty Mills -- in win-now mode. At least most of the time.

12. NEW ZEALAND (LR: 17)

Who wants to see the Kiwis unleash their most spirited Haka of the tournament with Australia on the other side of the court? It is possible now after New Zealand hauled itself off the canvas in Group C, recovering from the big blown lead over Turkey in its opener and an 0-3 start overall to narrowly snag fourth place in the group and the last spot in the next round over Ukraine. New Zealand would have to beat Lithuania on Sunday to make the spicy Oceanic showdown happen -- and Australia would have to follow with an upset of Turkey -- but you suspect Kirk Penney has to heat up after some uncharacteristic struggles from outside in pool play for the Kiwis to have a real shot.

13. CROATIA (LR: 10)

The committee (of one) took a fair bit of heat from a variety of in-the-know folks around the league who blasted us for having the Croatians down at No. 10 in the first edition of the FIBA Rankings. The Croats then proceeded to uncork a vintage weeklong unraveling that included losses to Senegal and Greece and a near-loss to the Philippines, prompting a few players to push for coach Jasmin Repesa to step down immediately. As in during the tournament. Tenth, in other words, looks like it might have been too high.

14. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (LR: 21)

I was guilty of putting too much stock in the Dominicans' limp showing at Madison Square Garden in an Aug. 20 exhibition game against Team USA when I made my initial pre-tournament projections. Turns out the Dominicans, even without the injured Al Horford, had more moxie than some of us know-it-alls realized, starting with Francisco Garcia. The Houston Rockets' veteran swingman enters the second round as the tournament's No. 5 scorer at 20.3 points per game -- on 56.5 percent shooting from the floor and 65.4 percent shooting on 3s -- under coach Orlando Antigua of South Florida and two assistants from the NBA in Bill Bayno and Pat Zipfel.

15. SENEGAL (LR: 23)

Wolves fans frustrated that Rick Adelman didn't give Gorgui Dieng more of a chance last season next to Kevin Love have presumably been muttering told-you-sos all week after watching the young big man lead Senegal to a win over Croatia and the most unexpected Round of 16 berth on the board. Dieng even leads the tournament in FIBA's answer to PER with a "Valuation" of 22.8. Pau Gasol and Kenneth Faried, by comparison, are fourth and fifth in the same category at 22.2 and 21.6, respectively.

16. MEXICO (LR: 16)

I fully admit it. Ever since I wrote a piece on Mexico's Cinderella run to the FIBA Americas title last summer in Venezuela, I've had a soft spot for these guys. So I was indeed quietly rooting for Gustavo Ayon, Jorge Gutierrez and the rest of the #12guerreros to finish fourth in Group D, thereby forcing an elimination-game showdown with their neighbors to the north, because it's simply been too long since the United States and Mexico played a basketball game at this level. The last such instance was 1967, but the drought is over at last after Mexico's wins over Angola and South Korea by a combined 40 points.

17. UKRAINE (LR: 12)

Mike Fratello was incredibly calm and gallant as he broke the news, to a gathering of reporters who had no idea what was coming, that Ukraine had missed out on a spot in the Round of 16 and a Sunday meeting with Lithuania by a solitary point. It was a very cruel way to go out, especially for a country participating in its first World Cup, but Fratello absorbed the bad news in the most sporting manner possible. The tiebreaker to separate the three teams in Group C with 2-3 records was to add up the scores in the games between them. The Dominicans were a plus-3 in those two games. New Zealand was a minus-1. And Ukraine was a minus-2. The reality, though, is that losses to Finland and New Zealand were the bigger culprits; Ukraine should have won at least one of those games based on how it played against Turkey and the United States.

18. ANGOLA (LR: 22)

Don't care how hard Australia was trying to give away Thursday's Group D finale. SMU senior Yanick Moreira totaling 38 points and 15 rebounds for Angola, under any circumstances, jumps off the page. And not just because he plays his college ball for Larry Brown in the same zip code, relatively speaking, as the Power Rankings Dungeon. Two wins and Moreira's bust-out performance … impressive.

19. FINLAND (LR: 15)

I miss their inimitable fans already. Finland's loud and loyal hordes of supporters thoroughly livened up Group C and were openly devastated by those three successive losses by six points or less -- to the Dominican Republic, Turkey and New Zealand -- that followed a stirring upset of Ukraine. Point guard Petteri Koponen played well enough to suggest that he does have an NBA future, but he'll undoubtedly need some time to mourn this week's disappointments, since it looked at the end of the New Zealand game as though Koponen took the string of narrow defeats harder than anyone.

20. PHILIPPINES (LR: 20)

Andray Blatche doesn't have an NBA contract for next season yet, but he's secured full-fledged hero status in the Philippines after the Great Blatche Experiment saw the much-maligned big man average 21.2 points and a tournament-best 13.8 rebounds in pool play. Blatche led the success-starved Gilas to a near-upset of Croatia and a win over Senegal in the Group B finale to ensure they came away with something in the basketball-mad Philippines' first appearance on the world basketball stage in 36 years.

21. PUERTO RICO (LR: 14)

The tournament's leading scorer is already back home. Gritty, gutty J.J. Barea averaged 22 points per game and was his typical stubborn little self, but Puerto Rico couldn't afford to lose Carlos Arroyo to an ankle injury when Renaldo Balkman was already playing hurt. The Group B loss to Senegal -- the game in which the team lost Arroyo -- was the difference. Perhaps the likes of Ricky Ledo, Moe Harkless and Shabazz Napier will join this team in the future for a fresh infusion of NBA talent.

22. IRAN (LR: 19)

Hamed Haddadi fans couldn't have asked for much more. Iran predictably struggled to keep up with the rest of Group A apart from the automatic win over Egypt, but Haddadi put up numbers many Grizz-watchers are bound to have trouble believing, ranking No. 7 in pool play in scoring at 18.8 points per game and tying Senegal's Dieng for second in rebounding at 11.4 RPG.

23. SOUTH KOREA (LR: 18)

Ranking South Korea ahead of the Philippines a week ago -- when the Filipinos had finished higher than the Koreans in qualifying for the World Cup -- will not go down as one of the committee's finest moments. My reasoning was that I thought the South Koreans, unlike the Gilas, actually had a chance to advance out of their group. They wound up suffering losses of 34 and 30 points to Australia and Lithuania, respectively, and were really only competitive in an 11-point defeat to Angola.

24. EGYPT (LR: 24)

Angola, Finland and the Philippines all ‎had their moments in pool play despite failing to advance to the knockout phase. Can't even pretend to make a similar claim about Egypt, which got progressively less competitive as Group A unfolded, finally bowing out with a humbling 63-point loss Thursday in Granada to Brazil.