'Now it’s nothing': Huge win vs USA goes down the drain for Lithuania
MANILA, Philippines – There is no consolation for Lithuanian forward Tadas Sedekerskis after his team was knocked out of contention of the 2023 FIBA World Cup following a humbling 87-68 loss to Serbia in the quarterfinals at the Mall of Asia Arena on Tuesday.
Coming off of a high when they ended the second round with a 110-104 victory over the erstwhile unbeaten Team USA, Lithuania fell flat against the hot-shooting Serbians as they were buried early.
Before the knockout rounds, Lithuania was undefeated. But when it mattered the most, they faltered.
“For sure, it was a big win but we knew that we came here to win a medal. We set our goal on the first day of our camp, so we want a medal,” Sedekerskis said after the game.
“Of course, nobody were waiting for us to play that good so our goal was to win the medal and we knew that if we want to win that, we have to beat Serbia today in the quarterfinals to go to the semifinals and that the game against the United States, as you can see now, now it’s nothing.”
Don’t get Sedekerskis wrong, though, he was adamant that he and his teammates were able to shrug off the emotion of the win before facing Serbia. There were no more false remnants of glory or whatnot.
Still, he couldn’t explain what happened in the lopsided loss to the Serbians.
“We forgot the game very fast against [the] United States but I don’t know, I don’t know actually what happened today. It looked like [Serbia] played more aggressive, they played better defense,” he said.
“We couldn’t get in our rhythm and you could see the result says it all. We lost by 20 points without a fight and then they just crushed us,” he added.
Despite the demoralizing result, Lithuania still has the chance to finish the tournament on a high note in the classification games set later this week.
Lithuania finished ninth in the previous edition of the World Cup.
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