Dana
Years ago
Recent Boomers Opponents- Lithuania
Below is a translated transcript from the Lithuanian men's basketball foundation about the recent tournament played in China.
I mentioned in an earlier post about keeping things in perspective about the Boomers winning in Perth.
This might be of interest to some of you who wonder what gets written over in Lithuania. (or not?)
Valdemaras Chomicius: "Passion for game compensated the lack of experience"
One of the Lithuanian National Basketball Team coaches can already be proud. Chomicius and his team that consisted mostly of newcomers to national squad have won the First B.Stankovic Continental Champions Cup. On Tuesday (08 02) coach came back to Lithuania with trophy and three players who will join the rest of players that are preparing for Eurobasket 2005. The rest of the team moved to Australia. There Lithuanians will participate in Four Nation tournament.
N.team.lt has interviewed Valdemaras Chomicius soon before he left Lithuanian seaside Palanga where National team is recently practising.
-Coach, the results you have achieved with your team are really great. Can you say the same about basketball the team was playing?
-Let's be honest, team that was playing in China consisted of players who decided to spend their vacation playing basketball, representing Lithuania instead of lying on the beach. Moreover, these players are not key players in their clubs.
But none of them has let me down. We went to China without full course of practice and only one week we had to learn how to play defence and offence, but players' desire to compete have filled the gaps that were arising when we played.
Team was getting better each day, even though in first tournament we were struggling, but at the end we won all three games. After second tournament in Charbin, we felt lack of physical fitness and couple days of rest before B.Stankovic cup helped us a lot.
- Which players have impressed you the most?
-I had little information about Martynas Andriukaitis. I knew that he played in BC "Alytus", was member of "Zalgiris" for a short time, but I had no up to date information how he was doing in France where his club is. In China he showed very solid performance (Andriukaitis was named B.Stankovic cup MVP). He played very powerful basketball, was getting rebounds and always was aggressive even though it was obvious that he was tired.
Mindaugas Lukauskis also showed excellent performance. He was not afraid to take control in decisive moments of the game. Pavelas Ciukinas was great in defence and blocking the opponents.
Nevertheless it was obvious that these players need more playing experience. They should play more.
-Your opponents were N.Zeland National Team, Argentina, China. Teams that even main Lithuanian team have problems beating. In your opinion, teams you were playing were weak, or your team was very strong?
-It should be pointed out that all matches we played were very close games. I would say that we had good coaching staff. Together with my colleagues Kestutis Kemzura and Linas Salkus we defined very clear goal - to win as many games as possible.
photo: LTU coaches in China, from the left Valdemaras Chomicius, Kestutis Kemzura, Linas Salkus
This clear knowledge of what we are playing for I think was helping our players to focus during decisive moments of the game. Players played with big heart each game and that's what helped us to get through difficult situations.
-Three players have come back with you to continue practice with main National team players. What was reasoning to choose exactly those players?
-Vidas Ginevicius needs to go through physical fitness course. Practices with Aleksandras Kosauskas in charge should be useful to him. He as well as Simonas Serapinas and Saulius Kuzminskas are needed to ensure the number of players for practices to go on full scale.
When the team comes from Australia I'm going to suggest to put Mindaugas Lukauskis, Martynas Andriukaitis and Giedrius Gustas to National team candidates list.
-What is our general opinion about idea launch National team B?
-If it was up to me, I would like to have more than two National teams and let it participate in different tournaments. I think we have enough players for more than two teams. In tournament in China I could test the players from different points of view. We could see their capacity, psychological strength, ability to stay fit during long period of time, how time difference is affecting them and many other things. It was very useful for coaches and I think players as well.
On the other hand, we could see if some of players can be invited to National team in nearest future. What are their disadvantages, what should they improve. So at the end I should say that experiment was a success.
