Jonas Valanciunas and Rima Valentiene were chosen by the Lithuanian people as the best players of the year and will be honored with the presentation of the Player of the Year awards on Saturday.
The 19-year-old Valanciunas, who is playing for Lietuvos Rytas, led the country’s U19 team to gold in the 2011 FIBA U19 World Championship in Riga, being awarded the MVP honors on the way. The player also had a rather successful debut in the Lithuanian senior side, finishing fifth in EuroBasket.
With 31.9% of all votes, Valanciunas finished with a clear advantage over the second-placed Rimantas Kaukenas (19.9%) and Donatas Motiejunas, who ended up third with 14.3% of the votes.
Rima Valentiene won the honors amongst women, getting 27.5% of the votes, Ausra Bimbaite finished second with 16.5%, while Sandra Linkeviciene had 16.2%, which gave her the third place.
