Lithuania Rout Slovenia To Top Group C

Lithuania's Sandra Linkeviciene led all scorers with 18 points and, quite impressively for a guard, corralled nine rebounds

Gintare Petronyte and Sandra Linkeviciene combined to power Lithuania past Slovenia, 65-46.

The hosts took sweet revenge for their loss earlier in the campaign and help their team take outright control of EuroBasket Women Qualification Round Group C.

With both these teams and a third contender -the Slovak Republic - sitting with only one loss to their name heading into this clash, the outcome could prove to be a hugely influential one for coach Algirdas Paulauskas and his players.

Slovenia lost Teja Oblak during the game to a nasty looking injury and that's potentially a significant blow since they have already been rocked by the loss of both Eva Komplet and Tjasa Gortnar.

Consequently, their run of bad luck is now severely testing their depth after this second loss in three games, something which now means a nervous finale to the campaign.

Having beaten Lithuania 79-68 at home, there was hope the visitors could perhaps complete a double over their rival, but a shocking 23-8 third quarter and the loss of Oblak destroyed their chances.

As did a couple of excellent performances by Petronyte and Linkevicine, with the former recording a double-double with 16 points and 11 rebounds while the latter led all scorers with 18 points and added nine boards.

Quotes Lithuania vs. Slovenia

Slovenia Head Coach Boris Zrinski
"Tonight we had some shocking first minutes, when our main playmaker got a very serious injury. It was the third injury in our team during the last fourteen days. Lithuania took an advantage when they knew that we had only one playmaker in the team. They played aggressively on Nika Baric and we could not play our game on offense. We had problems in scoring and when Sandra Pirsic was called for her fifth foul we had problems in rebounding and only had seven players in rotation. That was not enough to play against a good Lithuanian team today."

Lithuania Head Coach Algirdas Paulauskas
"I think that we're a better team. Egle Sulciute was a great help to the team, Sandra Linkeviciene led the team throughout the game and Gintare Petronyte played well offensively, too. We didn't win in Slovenia, so there was some pressure in the beginning of the game. We needed to win by 11 points to counter the deficit of the first game. The first part of the game was awful. It's good to see that we managed to concentrate after the break, the players started playing as hard as they can and the results were visible. That gave us an impulse to win by a bigger margin than we had lost on the road. We didn't really need to change the game during halftime. We just told the players to play their game and not create anything on the spot. When they play their basketball, we can get the results we need."

Slovenia player Martina Dover
"In the second half three of our players got fouled out and we could not play. Maybe we did not play excellent, but we have already won against them and we know, that we can play with them."

Lithuania forward Gintare Petronyte
"We did a good job and won by the needed margin. We took this game very seriously, the result is good, even if we are not very happy with our performance."