Bosnia and Herzegovina’s basketball players said goodbye to the European Championship after losing 87:70 to Lithuania in the fifth round of the group stage today in Cologne.
Lithuania and Bosnia and Herzegovina finished the group stage with an identical ratio of two wins and three losses, so in that case the ranking is decided by the ratio between them. That’s why today’s match was crucial and the Lithuanians reached the knockout stage.
The beginning of the game was quite even and the teams took turns in the lead. In the middle of the first quarter, the Lithuanians increase the gas and leave with a difference of eight points, but our team comes back with a great series, so the first part ended with a score of 28:28.
Then followed a complete decline in the game of our selection, while the Lithuanians were able to achieve everything they imagined. The advantage was constantly growing, at one point it was +15 for the Lithuanians, and they went to rest with a score of 56:42. It is worth pointing out that in the first half, our team had no solution for Marius Grigonis, who scored 14 points, exactly as many as the lone Džanan Musa in our selection.
The Lithuanians dominated the rest of the game, especially under the basket, so it was no surprise that at one point they even had a 22-point advantage (69:47).
However, at the end of the third quarter, our team woke up a little and managed to reduce the advantage to 16 points before the last part.
Both selections then had incredible misses in the last quarter, so very few points were seen. Even in such a game, Lithuania did not lose the strings of the game and they calmly brought the match to an end to advance to the round of 16 of Eurobasket.
Džanan Musa was the best in the BiH selection today with 22 points and five assists. Jusuf Nurkic had 15 points and five rebounds. On the other hand, Marius Grigonis scored 16 points with six rebounds, while Jonas Valanciunas, Arnas Butkevicius and Ignas Brazdeikis scored 13 points each, Klix.ba writes.
