By Michalis Gioulenoglou/ info@eurohoops.net
Riga, Latvia – Lithuania had a good tournament despite losing key player Rokas Jokubaitis early on. They reached the 2025 EuroBasket quarterfinals, but couldn’t get past Greece.
After 40 minutes of intense battle, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Greek team prevailed. At the postgame press conference, coach Rimas Kurtinaitis shared his remarks.
“First, I want to congratulate Greece on a good game, and personally Vassilis Spanoulis for his perfect coaching. Greece was stronger than us tonight. We fought, I don’t question our players, because our power tonight was like that. It was not good enough. We were not strong enough to win,” Kurtinaitis said.
He emphasized the lack of point guards after Jokubaitis’ injury.
“Our biggest problem was that we had no real playmaker, what we were talking about all EuroBasket after Rokas’ injury. That was our biggest problem tonight. In these games, you need players who can make others better. Let’s see what happens in the Final Four.”
Kurtinaitis was asked whether Lithuania looked against Greece like Latvia had looked against Lithuania in the previous round.
“We just fight. We have six new players, some of them playing at this level for the first time. For sure, it’s difficult. It’s easy for someone like Spanoulis, who played for 20 years, he knows everything. We put young guys against him, they are just looking for experience. We had different players on the court tonight. I don’t think it was the same situation as Lithuania against Latvia. I don’t think we were stronger than Latvia—we just won. But I don’t think Latvia was weaker than us either. Okay, that victory was great for us, but tonight—not so good.”
Team captain and Denver Nuggets center Jonas Valančiūnas was satisfied with the fight his team put up despite the loss.
“Tonight was a battle, both teams battled until the end, but they were stronger. Congrats to the Greek team, they were better than us. I was happy we fought until the end. That was good, a good fight.”
There were a lot of new faces in the Lithuanian team, but Valančiūnas stressed that everybody knew what it means to wear the national team’s jersey.
“There is no need to explain to our guys what it means to represent a country. They all know and feel pride in doing that. Everybody is happy to put the Lithuanian jersey on and represent the country. We are strong together. We have the best team to support each other, to be one as a team. We play for each other, and I’m happy to be part of it. It’s a great feeling,” Valančiūnas concluded.