Despite being without four of their most influential players, Lithuania came into EuroBasket 2009 as one of the favourites largely because of the experience of their frontcourt players and the talent and basketball smarts of their young and so far untested guards.
But one week into the tournament, things could not look any different than what was expected.
Lithuania opened their Preliminary Round campaign with defeats against Turkey (84-76) and hosts Poland (86-75) before beating minnows Bulgaria 84-69 in the last game to book their place in Lodz.
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| Sarunas Jasikevicius is one of many stars missing from Lithuania's line-up. |
"We can't find our game at the moment. We're not happy with how we're playing. How can we be? We have played very bad at times but we just don't know what we're doing wrong," said veteran center Robert Javtokas.
"As long as we have a chance, we're going to keep playing hard. We have a lot of fans here and we don't want to disappoint them.
"Right now whatever we do or try to do, nothing works. Maybe it's a mental thing more than what we're doing out on the court."
"We played well in our preparation games. I think we played two or three times better in those games than we are doing now. We beat Spain by 20 points at home, we played well against Russia. We played well and hard and with the players that we have now in this tournament."
Lithuania now must beat both Spain and Serbia in their final games just to stand a remote chance of contending for a Quarter-Final berth.
Should they fail to advance to the knockout stages in Katowice, it would be the first time since 2001 they have not made it to the last eight of the EuroBasket.
The absences of star guards Sarunas Jasikevicius (sidelined after recovering from surgery on his left knee), Rimantas Kaukenas (sitting out due to an illness in his family) and Arvydas Macijauskas (unable to play due to his involvement in the ongoing legal battle with Greek club Olympiakos) have dealt Lithuania a big blow.
Also, the unavailability of versatile forward Ramunas Siskaukas - who decided to retire from international competition following last year's Olympic Games in Beijing - was a massive blow to Ramunas Bitautas' side.
But Lithuania won't use any of those absences as excuses for their current downward spiral.
They had high hopes that with those four players missing, the likes of Simas Jasaitis and Linas Kleiza would take their chances to step up, fill the void and take on bigger roles.
To a certain degree, Jasaitis has answered the call, ranking second on the team in scoring. Kleiza though has not lived up to expectations - both his own high ones and those set by the team - and is said to be extremely frustrated as he can't figure out what he is doing wrong.
And the forward's problem is symbolic of what is troubling the team as a whole: they have no doubt there is a problem to fix but don't even know how to begin addressing it as they aren't sure what and where exactly it lies.
In fact looking at the statistics, Lithuania have had different breakdowns in each game. In their loss to Turkey, Butautas' men committed 26 fouls resulting in 26 free-throw attempts for their opponents (they converted on 23 of them) and turned the ball over 15 times.
They did a better job of taking care of the ball against Poland (only nine turnovers) but poor shooting from three-point range (four of 18) and the foul line (11 of 22) cost them that game.
The foul shot accuracy was dealt with swiftly as they hit on 22 of 24 attempts to beat Bulgaria, despite committing 20 turnovers.
Butautas called their defeat against Slovenia their worst performance of the tournament so far and it was in that they were late to close down on their opponents' shooters time and again and at the other end could not hit shots of their own, missing 21 of 36 attempts from two-point range and a disastrous 6 of 22 from behind the arc.
"I understand that we are going to have problems on offense in some games, but our defense should always be good. In the games before the tournament, I don't think any team scored more than 60 points against us. Now they all are," Javtokas argued.
The bright side - if there is one - for Lithuania is that, despite all their struggles, the team has not grown apart in the process. They are still in it together and will battle to the very end. It may not sound like much, but that is what Javtokas is banking on.
"We're all disappointed and we all want to turn it around. We keep thinking we still have a chance. We don't have any stars really so we just have to play together and rely on our ability to play tough," he added.
