We remind you that after the confrontation with the Lithuanians, the Turks will travel to Iceland on August 31. Rimas Kurtinaitis’ pupils will host the basketball players of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Vilnius that same Monday evening. You can purchase tickets for this battle here.
The website of the Lithuanian Basketball Association, lietuva.basketball, provides statistics of meetings between Lithuania and Turkey. Including matches of reserve teams, Lithuanians and Turks have crossed paths 29 times. Our team triumphed 20 times, while the opponents celebrated victory 9 times.
The first time our team had to play against the Turkish national team was about 30 years ago – in 1993 in Izmir, Lithuanians played two consecutive friendly matches with the Turks. Turkey won both times with almost identical results – 102:90 and 100:92.
In the very first game, a scoring record was set when playing against Turkish basketball players, which has not been broken to this day. Gintaras Krapikas scored 29 points against the Turks in 1993!
This result was matched only once – in 2003, during the European Championship qualifiers, A. Macijauskas scored the same 29 points.
However, Arvydas had more time than Gintaras – the match in Istanbul required overtime, after which the Lithuanian national team won 102:99.
Generational Change
We had to wait another four years for official matches, until the 1997 European Championship. By then, Arvydas Sabonis, Rimas Kurtinaitis, Šarūnas Marčiulionis, and head coach Vladas Garastas were no longer there, replaced by Jonas Kazlauskas, and Artūras Karnišovas took the role of leader on the court. Lithuanians met the Turks in the second stage matches and won 93:85.
Five Lithuanians scored at least 13 points against the opponents – the top scorer A. Karnišovas scored 27 points, Gintaras Einikis added 20, Darius Lukminas scored 16, Saulius Štombergas scored 15, and Dainius Adomaitis completed the list of top scorers with 13 points. This match determined that Lithuanians took third place in the second stage group and had to play the quarterfinals against the Yugoslavs, while the Turks faced the Italians. However, neither Lithuania nor Turkey managed to celebrate victory in the quarterfinals.
For seven Lithuanian national team basketball players, the matches against Turkey were their debut in the national team. Among these players, the names of Arvydas Macijauskas and Robertas Javtokas stand out the most – long-time symbols of Lithuanian basketball and pillars of the national team debuted in different years, but precisely in matches against the Turks. Matches against representatives of this country were also debuts for Tomas Pačėsas, Arvydas Vansevičius, Virginijus Praškevičius, Andrius Lepinaitis, and Donatas Zavackas. The most successful debut was by Praškevičius – the future European champion scored 9 points in the friendly matches held in Izmir in 1993 (in the same matches, T. Pačėsas and A. Vansevičius also debuted but without scoring points).
The Lithuanian national team tested the Turks nine times in European or World Championships. The most enjoyable to remember is undoubtedly the 2014 World Championship quarterfinal. With cohesive team play locking down the opponents, Jonas Kazlauskas’ pupils won 73:61 and advanced to the World Championship semifinals. Lithuanians controlled the entire second half of the game, allowing the Turks to lead only briefly in the first half of the third quarter. Renaldas Seibutis, who was the top scorer with 19 points and made all three three-pointers, should remember this game with his usual broad smile.
They have not yet met the Turkish basketball players in the World Championship qualifiers, but the paths of Lithuanians and Turks have already crossed in European Championship qualifiers. This happened in the qualifiers for the 2003 European Championship, where Lithuanian basketball players were unmatched. In the first qualifier held in Vilnius, our team swept the Turks 100:62, and a year later, almost to the day (one game was on January 26, 2002, and the other on January 25, 2003), Lithuanians won the aforementioned match after overtime – 102:99.
Overtime was also needed when playing against Turkey in 2006. Then, at the World Championship in Japan, the Lithuanian national team squandered their lead at the end of the match for 5th-8th place and allowed the Turks to force overtime, where the opponents wearing red dominated – 95:84. In the same championship, Lithuanians also fought the Turks in the opening match, where, unfortunately, they also lost – 74:76.
Kurtinaitis’ Statistics
Although the match on Friday will be the thirtieth meeting in the history of men’s basketball matches between Lithuania and Turkey, their paths have crossed only twice in the last 10 years.
Last year, Rimas Kurtinaitis’ pupils played two friendly matches against the Turks, sharing one win each – on August 7 in Istanbul, Lithuanian basketball players won (91:70), and on August 20 in Vilnius, the southerners took revenge (84:81).
