Zalgiris struggles against Rudupis, prevails 0
Rudupis managed to give Zalgiris a rare frightening experience in a Lithuanian League (LKL) game, but the visitors from Kaunas prevailed, taking an 81:74 victory from the nearby Prienai.
Zalgiris’ coach Ramunas Butautas decided not to register Travis Watson for the game and Marcus Brown sat on the bench for the whole match. Mantas Kalnietis was already back in the lineup after missing yesterday’s victory against Suduva due to food poisoning.
Dainius Salenga led the visitors with 18 points, 5 steals and 4 assists. Mantas Kalnietis scored 17 and dished out 5 assists as Tadas Klimavicius collected 15 and Siim-Sander Vene and Martynas Pocius had 9 points each.
Rudupis’ Gintautas Vileita had a good all-around performance, scoring a game-leading 23 points, making 7 assists and grabbing 5 assists, all to go with unfortunate 6 turnovers. Povilas Sakinis collected 14 points as Gytis Andrijauskas and Giedrius Jankauskas had 11 and 9 points respectively.
The game started with Zalgiris as the clear favorite and the Lithuanian League leaders seemed to be on the way to prove that they were the better team, taking a 9:5 lead early on. However, the hosts went on an amazing 13:0 run mostly behind Vileita’s effort to swing the advantage in their favor – 18:9.
Zalgiris did manage to claw back into the game quite quickly and a see-saw battle between the two sides began, with the visitors having a small edge.
The Lithuanian runners up built a nine point advantage as Tadas Klimavicius nailed both free throws, making the scoreboard tick to 62:53. Rudupis, once again, showed that they were not to be fooled with, going on another double-digit run of 10 unanswered points to get themselves right back into contention at 63:62.
After a time out from Butautas, Klimavicius scored from beyond the arch, but the hosts answered every Zalgiris shot with their own and the score was tied at 69:69.
With two minutes on the clock Martynas Pocius had an and-one play and Dainius Salenga went on to score a triple to bring the lead back to Zalgiris – 75:71. Salenga and Kalnietis converted two shots from the charity stripe each and with half a minute remaing Zalgiris looked to have sealed the outcome. Gintautas Vileita managed to score from downtown to restore hope in Rudupis camp with the score at 74:79, but Salenga made his free throws after being intentionally fouled to put an end to the game.
Coach Butautas relied mostly on the core players as Salenga, Kalnietis and Klimavicius spent around 35 minutes on the floor each and Pocius played 27.
After two back to back victories in two days, Zalgiris remains the only undefeated team in the LKL.
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