Lithuania through in 94-68 win over China

Lithuania shattered China's hope to make history on home soil by winning 94-68 in a quarter-final match of the men's basketball competitions at the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday.

Lithuania will meet Spain, which beat Croatia 72-59 in previous match, in Wednesday's semifinals.

China repeated their eighth-placing finishings at the 2004 Athens Olympics, but failed to live up to their vows of making a breakthrough here.

Sarunas Jasikevicius shot 5-out-of-6 from behind the arc to lead Lithuania, which were 13-out-of-31 on 3-pointers, with 23 points and six assists.


Lithuania see off China 94-68
Ramunas Siskauskas had three three-pointers and Linas Kleiza had two to collect 15 points each. Lithuania defeated China 95-75 in the quarter-finals at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Yao Ming led China with 19 points and seven rebounds while Yi Jianlian adding 11 points and nine rebounds, which were 4-out-of-21 on 3-pointer, the worst in their six matches of the tournament.

"I had a different Olympic trip this time compared to the 2004 Athens. To finish eighth here is much more difficult than that of four years ago. We enjoyed the Beijing Olympics and played many exciting matches. It's really a pity we didn't make a better result here," Yao said.

The Houston Rockets' center began his national career in 1997 with the best results were the twice eight-placed finishings at Olympics.

"I wished the courage would carry us to the next round, to make a record in the history of Chinese basketball, but I failed. Lithuania did a great job on defending me. They also shut down our offence from the outside shooters," he added.

Yao said he was not sure whether he would compete at the 2012 London Olympics as the 28-year-old center had underwent three surgeries in the past four years.

"Yao is the center piece of the Chinese squad. The whole world knows that and every team knows to defend Yao. We really wanted the win but we didn't going well on either ends of the court," Chinese Du Feng said.

Lithuania capitalized 12 steals with 16 fast-break points, compared to China's zero. They concluded every quarter with a 3-pointer when China failed to shut down Lithuania's sharp shooters.

"We defended Yao well. We knew it would be too hard to defend him one on one, so we doulbled him as much as we could, and that's the key to our victory," Lithuania's head coach Ramunas Butautas said.

Lithuanian Jonas Kazlauskas was the former national coach of Lithuania during 1997-2001 before he was appointed as the assistant coach of China in 2004. He took the post of the China's head coach in April of 2005.

"We lost our momentum when Lithuania defended Yao successfully. We were a little bit tired today because we had a tough schedule in the preliminary round," Kazlauskas said.

A pair of 3-pointers put Lithuania up by 12-6 before China used a 11-2 run to lead by 17-14 on Yi's two free-throws.

Siskauskas' long-ranged shot regained the lead on 19-17 in the first quarter while Lithuanian carried on to make it 38-28, the first double-digit gap for the Europeans.

He made another one at the end of the first half to give Lithuania a comfortable 41-30 lead before Kleiza chipped in 10 points to extend the lead on 70-53 in the third quarter.

Jasikevicius made two consecutive 3-pointers banking the third and fourth periods to damp China's last hope of comeback.

China's best shooter Zhu Fangyu finally found his rythem to make his first 3-pointer on his fift attempts to cut the lead to 70-56 one minute into the fourth period, but Lithuania answered with a 14-2 run to put the game out of China's reach.

Source: Xinhua