Ramunas Butautas is the new head coach of Zalgiris Kaunas 0

Zalgiris Kaunas took a page out of its own history on Thursday by hiring former Lithuanian national team boss Ramunas Butautas as the team’s new head coach. Butautas arrives from BC Donetsk of Ukraine, where he coached the current season until last week, to replace Gintaras Krapikas, who left Zalgiris around the same time after the team’s seventh loss in the first eight Euroleague games.

Butautas is the son of a Zalgiris legend, Stepas Butautas, who played for the club in the 1950s and coached the team from 1975 to 1978. Butautas is best-known for his work with various Lithuanian national teams, most notably a bronze-medal finish at the 2007 European Championships in Spain and fourth place at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. With the country’s under-21 national team, he won the 2005 World Championships in Argentina, and with the under-21 team, bronze in 2004.

At the club level, Butautas spent most of the last four seasons at ASK Riga in Latvia, and the two right before that, from 2003 to 2005, at BC Siauliai of Lithuania.