Jokubaitis, who emphasized unfulfilled things: “The individual dominance ended us again” / News

Photo: zalgiris.lt

Photo: zalgiris.lt

Photo: zalgiris.lt

Photo: zalgiris.lt

On the eve of the duel with the Milan Armani Exchange, Rokas Jokubaitis, who celebrated his 20th birthday in Italy, put on the most productive show of his Euroleague career, but the uplifting mood was hampered by a painful Italian stab.

Even before the long break, the Žalgiris people, who released Ettore Messina’s pupils, fell to a 20-point deficit in the third quarter, in which the Kaunas club was crushed by a promising defender.

Jokubaitis, who got up from the bench, scored a total of 15 points in 25 minutes, 10 of which came in the second half of the game.

“In the first half, they had the same problems again, when we didn’t reach the limit for team fouls, we allowed them to easily create a game, hit, scatter passes, followed by triples,” Jokubaitis told the BasketNews.lt website. – When we could make a foul and they were thrown from behind the touchline. Such small things killed the first half.

In the second half we were still able to come back, we were in the game, at the end, and we took them off the crab when we came out of that deficit. But for the second game in a row, the individual dominance ended us again: Malcolm Delaney, Kevin Punter, Sergio Rodríguez… they shared a lot of shots. We try a lot to endure the game, we are really very tired, but when we don’t have a victory, it’s even sadder. “

In the fourth quarter, Žalgiris, who beat his competitors, held out until the end. Three minutes after Thomas Walkup’s 3-pointer, Martin Schiller’s students were just one point behind, but then Rodriguez and Delaney’s 3-pointer missed and the Armani Exchange held out 89:82.

Man of the match

“In the second half, we played the same five for a long time and we were very tired, those mistakes started automatically. Those two attacks … But then we asked for a minute of rest, after which we caught a little bit again, Lukas (Lekavičius) he played a good section, “Jokubaitis continued.

For the Gregorians in the Euroleague, it was the fourth loss in a row and the fifth in the last six games. Although the section is not successful, Jokubaitis assured that the atmosphere in the dressing room is not particularly sad.

“Of course the emphasis is on defense, we lost almost a hundred points, but I don’t think the coaches can say anything about the second half of the game,” Jokubaitis said. – We are sad, but there is nothing negative in the dressing room, we support each other. After the match with Maccabi from Tel Aviv and CBet from Prienai, it was worse, there was so much tension inside the dressing room. It’s not much fun right now, but supporting each other and being positive helps a lot. “