Lithuania

Coach Ramunas Butautas: “Italy played very well tonight. We slept tonight, especially in the first half. We lost our concentrations and made too many mistakes on defense and in turnovers. We played like we can in defense and offense in the last minutes, so the finish was good and this is how we want the game. I think every night about the next game. This time it’s against France and we have to beat them and then I’ll think about the next game. We talk inside the team and everybody thinks about victory, not about minutes on the court. We are team, and not only stars.”

Rimantas Kaukenas: “Tough game for us. I think Italy played a great game. I want to congratulate them. For them it was very important to win this game, as well for us, but we lost some concentration at some point of the game and that hurt us at times. We’ve tried to execute all the mis-matches and our plans, we won the game on rebound and the execution of our plays.”

Italy

Coach Carlo Recalcati: “Congratulations to Lithuania. They are a great team. Tonight it was a difficult game for us in the beginning. Lithuania never lost a game, and they are a very good team that has good balance on offense. They don’t need just one player to go to the basket. In the end they had many options. We played a good game. We suffer too much under the basket, because we allow them 16 offensive rebounds. Lithuania get 15 rebounds more than us, and when you pay against a team like Lithuania, it’s very very difficult to win. We control the tempo of the game, and didn’t allow them to use the open court where they are very dangerous. It wasn’t enough, but I think that if we continue to play this way, we’ll win the next game.”

Luigi Da Tome: “I think that Lithuania is a strong team. It was maybe the best game we played in this championship, but in the end the important is to win. We lost and we are not in a good situation now. We need to forget this game and think about the next game. If we want to win we need to think about the next game.”