Lithuania
fought hard until the very end, but Dario Saric proved just too hard to handle,
as Croatia triumphed 88-76 (22-15,
14-18, 22-20, 30-23) against the tournament hosts in the U18 European
Championship final in Vilnius.
Croatia’s
superstar Saric saved his best performance for the gold-medal match against
Lithuania, finishing the game with 39 points, 11 rebounds and 4 assists and picked
up the Tournament MVP award.
“We
lost to Saric and that’s about as much as I can say,” said Marius Grigonis, who
had a team-high 17 points for Lithuania and was named to the All-Tournament
Team alongside Saric.
The
Saric-led Croatia started the game better, but Lithuania got back into the game
in the second quarter after Croatia’s go-to man picked up his third foul and
ended the first half on the bench.
Lithuania
were within one point at 47-48 as the third quarter was closing to an end, but
Saric converted on an and-one play to spark a 10-3 run for Croatia.
In the
final period, Lithuania had closed the deficit to six points (61-67), but Saric
was key for Croatia once again, scoring five points in quick succession to decide
the outcome of the game.
Tomislav
Gabric had 14 points for Croatia, while Mislav Brzoja and Dominik Mavra chipped
in 10 points each, being in the main contributors to the victory besides Saric.
For
Lithuania, Jokubas Gintvainis and Justas Tamulis scored 15 points each, while
the team’s captain Lukas Lekavicius had 9 points.
During
the fourth quarter, a brawl broke out between Simas Raupys and Karlo Zganec and
both players were disqualified.
Both
teams, alongside Serbia, Russia and Spain qualified to the FIBA U19 World
Championship in Czech Republic next year.
