Brazil continued their winning streak, downing Argentina 76-67, in day three of the FIBA Americas Championship.

Brazil jumped out to a 21-13 lead led by Anderson Varejão’s 11 first quarter points. But Argentina would go on a 8-2 run to start the second quarter to trim to lead to just two before Brazil went on their own run, outscoring Argentina 14-2 the rest of the quarter.

Brazil went into halftime up 14 points, 37-23.

The second half saw Brazil build double-digit leads only to see Argentina trim the lead to six twice, and five once, but wouldn’t get any closer than that as Brazil always had an answer.

Brazil was led by Leandro Barbosa‘s 21 points, Varejão’s 19 points, 9 rebounds and 3 steals, and Marcelo Huertas’ 18 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists.

Brazil’s starting five of Barbosa, Varejão, Huertas, Tiago Splitter, and Alex Garcia played 183 of the possible 200 minutes of the game.

Argentina was led by forward Luis Scola‘s was 9-16 from the field and tallied a team-high19 points. The rest of the Argentinian team shot just 36% on 17-47 shooting.

With the win, Brazil is now 3-0 and have defeated the other two favorites in their groupp, the Dominican Republic on day, and Argentina today. Brazil also defeated Venezuela.

With the loss, Argentina drops to 0-2 and is in danger of advancing past the prelimiary rounds. With losses to Venezuela and Brazil, the pressure is on Argentina to win out in their next two games vs. the Dominican Republic and Panama to have a chance at a berth to the 2010 World Championships.