ŁÓDŹ, Poland — Lithuania’s poor form has continued at Eurobasket, going down 81-58 to Slovenia in their first second round match-up on Saturday.

Lithuania’s coach Ramunas Butautas was confident in his troops’ abilities to lift their game going into the second round but the team showed the same lack of direction that had been such an issue in pool play. The performance seriously undermines Lithuania’s chances of moving through to the quarter-finals with anything but victory not an option for Lithuania for the remainder of the tournament.

At the completion of the first quarter Slovenia had already developed a healthy 10 point lead (28-18) with Lithuania struggling to make their shots count. The lead continued to grow as the game reached its half way stage with Lithuania 17 points adrift at the half (26-43). Marking up on Slovenia’s Jaka Lakovič was proving to be a particularly tough assignment for the Lithuanians with his clinical three-point shooting killing the Lithuanians.

Any hopes of a second half revival were quickly erased as Lakovic continued to drain his three-pointers. On the back of his shooting the Slovenian lead built to 23 (39-62) going into the fourth quarter. The Lithuanians will be able to take some consolation from the final quarter when they went point for point with the Slovenians restricting the lead from building but it was too little too late. Mantis Kalnietis lead the scoring for Lithuania with 15 in an otherwise average shooting performance from the Lithuanians, who were 21 from 58 for the night.

“This is our worst performance in this tournament,” Butautas stated blankly to a eurobasket2009.org reporter after the game.

The Lithuanians’ next assignment is not much easier, taking on Spain on Monday night. To their advantage is the knowledge that they have what it takes to beat the Spanish, having already done so prior to this tournament. Spain have also shown indifferent in eurobasket 2009, having also lost their first second-round match to Turkey 63-60.