By Aris Barkas / barkas@eurohoops.net
The Lithuanians got a 64-67 victory against the mighty Serbs in what turned out to be a thriller second semifinal at the Pierre Mauroy stadium in Lille.
The two teams were playing for a spot in the EuroBasket final against Spain and an automatic ticket to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio. Serbia were undefeated and the top scoring team in the tournament with 88 points a game, with an average winning margin of 15.1 points. After several close calls, Lithuania’s only loss in the tournament came in a tight game against Belgium in a Group D bout, and with this victory tonight, the 2013 runners-up secure their 7th straight trip to the Olympics.
Right from the start, the game was fiery, as one would expect a EuroBasket semifinal to be. Despite Serbia’s incredible numbers, the Lithuanians weren’t fooling around as they were leading the score from early on, closing out the first quarter with a 5-point advantage (17-22). Kazlauskas’s players weren’t letting up as they maintained their lead throughout the second, even, at one point, extending it to a double-digit margin. The Serbians, however, chipped away at the deficit and, aided by some unforced errors committed by their opponents, managed to close down the gap to a single point before the half time break (34-35).
With less than four minutes to go before the end of the third period, Djordjevic’s team finally took the lead, but couldn’t hold on to it for long. The Lithuanians – despite seeming a bit nervous and perhaps a little fatigued as well – promptly reclaimed the advantage and stretched it to 5 by the end of the third (43-48). The fourth period was when all the nail biting happened: with less than 4 seconds to go, Milos drilled in an improbable, crazy three pointer to take the score to 64-65. The Lithuanians though, through sheer grit and over-exertion, managed to hold and see the game out.
Jonas Valanciunas got the most for the Lithuanians with 15 points plus 3 boards on the side. Mindaugas Kuzminskas was huge for his team, scoring 13 points, grabbing 9 rebounds and handing out 1 assist. Mantas Kalnietis – the third-best passer in the tournament – had a hefty 9 assists, plus 12 points and 5 rebounds for good measure. Renaldas Seibutis got 13 points, 3 boards and 2 assists, and Jonas Maciulis added another 9 points and 6 rebounds.
“It was a really nice game for the spectators,” Kuzminskas remarked after the game. “We are really happy that we won it. Perhaps our strong side was that maybe in the quarterfinals and the semifinals, nobody expected us to win. But we showed our character, we showed our heart. And because of our defense we won this game.”
Milos Teodosic – Serbia’s driving force, averaging a tournament-best 8.3 assists – scored 16 points, collected 3 rebounds and dished out an underachieving, for his standards, 3 assists. Miroslav Raduljica and Nemanja Bjelica shared 10 points, the former grabbing 4 rebounds and the latter 3 before being fouled out late in the game. Bogdan Bogdanovic contributed another 9 points, 2 rebounds and 3 assists.
“We didn’t open the game fighting,” Djordjevic said, “and the Lithuania team played physically as we knew they would. We tried to come back, we expended a lot of energy. We made some bad choices taking a lot of three-point shots. We were stubbornly trying to win the game with a big three instead of trying to win the game moving the ball in and out. We didn’t made those shots. If we had it would have been different.”