R. Jokubaitis, who saw the Slovenians triumph: “It is sad when they are happy in our field”

“Technical foul!” – Arvydas Sabonis rose to his feet in the fourth quarter, when the referees scored the Lithuanian triple along with the Slovenian free-kick, and the latter began to raise waves and dance before the eyes of the judges.

Until then, the Lithuanian basketball player, who had been sitting quietly for almost every match, could not bear it, with the Lithuanians lagging behind the Slovenians by a double-digit gap and causing the Tokyo Olympics to fade away.

Since 1992, when they rose to the Olympics for the first time after regaining independence, Lithuanians have played seven matches in a row and missed none, but the time came when L. Dončičius visited Kaunas for the first time.

The Slovenian superstar, who scored an impressive triple-double (31 points, 11 rebounds and 13 assists) hit his country with a ticket to Tokyo, leading Slovenia to victory against Lithuania 96:85.

“Impressive, really impressive,” Rokas Jokubaitis reacted sadly to Luka’s spectacle after the match. We all know he needs to be stopped, but when he does those stats in the final: 30 points, more than 10 passes. What I can say is an impressive player. “

In the decisive match, the Lithuanian team went hand in hand with the Slovenians in two halves, after which the result remained 52:52.

At the start of the third, Luka started a real offensive party, scoring 6 points in a few minutes and distributing 5 passes, and Slovenia smoked 71:59.

The Lithuanians, having started to exchange defenses and somewhat confused the plans of L. Dončičius and the Slovenes, managed to push forward and reduce the deficit to 2 points, but in the end the Slovenians played again, escaped with a difference of double digits and it They did not look back.

“We stopped the attack, nothing failed, we wanted to exploit the big boys, but, as you can see, we didn’t get anything. The attack stopped. It is difficult to say something, very sad when they are happy in our field. We didn’t make it to the Olympics, ”said R. Jokubaitis, 20, who played for the Lithuanian national team for the first time.

The young man admitted that in the second part of the match, when the match started to fall apart, the fact that Lithuanians started looking for culprits and digging in didn’t help either.

“We went back to the third quarter and ran again,” Rock recalled. – We got stuck in the attack, we did not hit single balls for big, the game stopped. Everyone tried to find the culprits, pointing fingers at each other and the result. Sad.”