Zalgiris dominates over Lietuvos Rytas to start LKL finals 0
Travis Watson, Mirza Begic and Marcus Brown all had to finish the game early due to injuries. That, however, didn’t stop Zalgiris from winning on the road in Vilnius and taking the home-court advantage with them back to Kaunas.
The visitors dominated throughout the game and rolled to a comfortable 90:77 (20:13, 20:19, 24:25, 26:20) victory over Lietuvos Rytas on Tuesday evening.
Zalgiris problems with injuries started in the end of the second quarter. Donatas Zavackas knocked into Travis Watson and ended up hitting the American with his elbow. As it appeared, Zalgiris’ forward had a cut cheek and was rushed to hospital at halftime and needed ten stitches.
That aside, Zalgiris was doing fairly well, but Mirza Begic hurt his wrist in the beginning of the second half and Marcus Brown looked to be having problems with his knees and also left the court.
Vidas Ginevicius knocked in a three-pointer to bring Lietuvos Rytas back within a single point at 55:56, but Tadas Klimavicius ignited an 8:2 run to allow themselves a sigh of relief. Klimavicius collected 16 points in the third quarter alone with the rest of Zalgiris players contributing with 8.
Arturas Milaknis denied Lietuvos Rytas any chances of a comeback by hitting three long-range attempts in the last period.
Tadas Klimavicius played the main role in Zalgiris game scoring 22 points and grabbing one rebound after another to finish with 9. Mantas Kalnietis had a good game after a while and had 19 as Dainius Salenga finished the game with 12. Arturas Milaknis contributed with 10 points, Marcus Brown netted 9 while Travis Watson added 8.
Martynas Gecevicius set the pace for Lietuvos Rytas with 18 points, Kenan Bajramovic had an average performance, but still finished the game scoring 16. Igor Milosevic collected most of his points in the last quarter to bring his tally to 12 as Vidas Ginevicius knocked down three triples and ended up with 9 points in his account.
Rimas Kurtinaitis (Lietuvos Rytas coach): “First and foremost, I want to congratulate Zalgiris, who played very well and showed their spirit. We were unrecognisable on the court, we looked awful, like a team just after an evening training. There wasn’t any spirit, or team game. I was afraid this would happen with so many players just returning from injuries. I don’t want to blame anyone in particular, we all played bad. We couldn’t find a person to stop Tadas Klimavicius. I think, he’s our biggest problem right now. We’ll have to do something in the next game, improve our offense as we had problems there.”
Darius Maskoliunas (Zalgiris coach): “Just as we told the players, this is only a small step towards our goal. I’m happy with that we have the home-court advantage, I’m happy that we defeated Lietuvos Rytas in their arena. The victory cost us a lot of energy and three important players got injured. We have a couple of days to recover and I hope to have the injured players fit for Friday. Despite a knee injury, Marcus Brown is an old wolf, who could step on the court even with one foot and help his teammates. I’m thankful for the fight, the work on defense and offense as well that my players showed. They played with a huge motor and energy, emotions were flying on the court. We, the coaches, are very happy with this.”
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