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Photo: LKF
Photo LKF
Having gathered in Anykščiai on Sunday for the camp of the 3×3 basketball team, all its representatives, both basketball players and coaches, went to work without expecting anything and already at night in the first training of the national team.
After the exercise, the team’s coach, Dainius Novickas, shared his thoughts on starting work and the challenges ahead.
“I’m glad everyone we invited agreed to come, thank you guys. The mood is great, we are all from the same 3×3 basketball family. We have all grown from that beginning, we are friends. The story of this camp begins with us: how the “five against five” team has its own laughs and customs, after this camp we will pass those customs, “Novickas exploded with optimism the first day.
Žydrūnas Urbonas, the Utena Juventus strategist, also works with him at the team’s coaches’ headquarters. Both coaches prepared a detailed camp plan with some accents. However, any of the thirteen candidates are not yet scheduled to leave the team in the near future.
“Coach Žydrūnas and I made a plan of what we would like to get out of this camp, what frameworks we have, how to defend ourselves. We will emphasize everything from scratch, we will try to select people. As the time interval is long, we will all improve a little and see how things are going ”, the national team coach drew up the guidelines.
This camp is the first of its kind in history, marking the beginning of the Lithuanian national team’s Olympic journey. The most important dates of this trip so far are May 26-30, because that is when Grace (Austria) will fight for three tickets to Tokyo. However, in the coming months, this route may be supplemented with several more stops.
“We have plans to go to St. Petersburg, where there will be a German, Dutch national team, a Novi Sad team from Serbia. Next there will be a Doha tournament, we are planning a camp in Serbia, we are talking about Latvians coming to us or We are visiting them. There is a talk with the Belgian team, who will be our rival in the group stage, and the Dutch are also inviting. They are all preparing for the national team, so we will see how time allows us and we will prepare for that tournament, ”Novickas commented on the possible additional preparation course.
In the Olympic qualifying tournament, the Lithuanian 3×3 basketball team will be represented by four basketball players who looked better. A total of 20 teams will participate in the tournament, of which only three will win the right to compete in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
First, the Lithuanian national team will have to occupy at least second place in the group of five teams. Teams from the United States, Belgium, South Korea and New Zealand will be waiting for us. Then it will be mandatory to overcome the barrier of the quarterfinals. In the end, tickets to Japan would guarantee victory in the semi-finals, and if that fails, the small final would have to be won.
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