- You can check out the moments from the game in our photo gallery.
Despite the fact that both teams were playing for honor and pride only without any chances to either improve on their position or to make things worse, the game was very close until the end of third quarter when Lithuania used an 18-6 spurt to break the opponents at 82-60.
Two Lithuanian players with injuries – Robertas Javtokas and Simas Jasaitis – skipped today’s action allowing more court-time for the role players who have become used to spend more time on the bench.
Martynas Andriuskevicius played 21 minutes on the court while Martynas Gecevicius was finally given a chance to find his stroke hitting 4-of-10 from downtown. It took five games for the shooter to finally make a three-pointer in the tournament.
Renaldas
Seibutis had his best game as well nailing a lot of shots from the corners of
the court for a total of 17 points.
Lithuania: Renaldas Seibutis 17, Martynas Gecevičius 16, Tomas
Delininkaitis 11, Linas Kleiza 10.
Lebanon: Rony Fahed 19, Jackson Vroman 15, Ali Fakhreddine 11.
Kestutis Kemzura (head coach of Lithuania): “The most difficult part of this game for both sides was to find motivation. From aside it might have looked that we were still going to finish first and the game didn’t mean anything to Lebanon as well. However, I know coach Tab Baldwin, I knew that he wouldn’t just give up.
In the first half of the game we lacked confidence and committed a lot of turnovers. I can’t say that we played poorly, but Lebanon’s defense knocked us out of rhythm. The most important is that we found it in ourselves and became hungrier late in the game. I’m happy that we’ve finished the group stage with all five victories.”
Mantas Kalnietis: “We wanted to end everything on a high not even though this game didn’t mean anything. We promised ourselves to give our best, but I have to admit that we weren’t concentrated. That’s why the beginning of the game didn’t turn out to be good. We stepped up on defense in the second half and we were better tody.”
