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Posts tagged as “Lithuania”

Winners of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament 2024

July 8, 2024

It’s settled, the teams for the coming 2024 Paris Olympics Basketball tournament are now complete that the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament has concluded with 4 teams emerging from each tournament.

Below are winners for each of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament and qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics;

  • For the Greece Tournament, Greece came out on top after Giannis Antetokounmpo led the national team against Luka Doncic and Slovenia national team in the semis then Croatia in the Finals. Giannis Antetokounmpo scored a team high of 23 points and 8 rebounds.
  • In the Latvia Tournament, Brazil routs Latvia (94 – 69) displaying a balanced offensive effort, 5 Brazil players scored double-digit points and seven players made at least one or more assists. Bruno Caboclo led the Brazil national team with 21 points and 4 rebounds.
  • In the Puerto Rico leg of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, the Puerto Rico National team qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics after defeating the European basketball powerhouse Lithuania. Six foot Jose Alvarado, of the New Orleans Pelicans, led the team with 23 points and 6 rebounds, he also shot 4 of 6 from beyond the arc.
  • And last but not the least, the winner of the Spain Tournament of FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament is none other than the host country, Spain, who defeated Bahamas in front their home crowd. Lorenzo Brown led the Spaniards with 18 points and 4 rebounds. He also shot 4 of 5 (80) from the three-point line.

All four teams will head to Paris to joint their respective Olympic tournament groups.

Team USA Suffers First Loss of FIBA World Cup 2023 to Lithuania

September 4, 2023

Team USA’s unbeaten run at the FIBA World Cup 2023, winning their first five games of the tournament, came to an end on Sunday 3rd of September, when they lost to Lithuania in a thrilling encounter. The final score was 110-104 in favor of Lithuania and in front of 11,349 fans.

The game was played at the Mall of Asia Arena in Manila, Philippines, and saw Lithuania, who played a physical and aggressive game, take control early on. The Lithuanias built a 19 pts lead (12 – 31) in the first qtr and ended the first half with a comfortable 17 pts lead (37 – 54). The Americans led by Anthony Edwards tried to staged a come back but could not get closer than 4 pts (85 -89) with 4:45 mins remaining in the game. Anthony Edwards scored 34 pts and 2 assists, Jalen Brunson and Mikal Bridges both scored 14 pts but where in effective in the closing period of the game. The trio are the only American player to score in double figures.

Compared to the Team USA, Lithuania played a more balanced game with 7 players in double figures. The team is lead by Vaidas Kariniauskas with 15 pts, followed by Mindaugas Kuzminskas and Jonas Valanciunas, who scored 14 pts and 12 pts, respectively. Valanciunas also grabbed 7 rebs with his 2 blocks.

Lithuania killed the Americans in the second chance points category, making 17 pts against 2 pts from Team USA, 61 – 38 point off the bench. They also shot 52.8% from the field and 56% from three-point range, compare to 37.9% in the 3-pts by the Americans.

The loss is a wake-up call for Team USA, which is still considered the favorite to win the tournament. However, they will need to play better if they want to avoid further upsets.
Despite the loss, Team USA still advanced to the quarterfinals of the FIBA World Cup and are qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics. They will face Italy on Tuesday, while the Lithuania will face Serbia, who are 4 – 1 in the tournament.

Game Highlights

Lithuania recommends to dispose your Chinese smartphones because of censorship issue

September 22, 2021

Lithuania’s Defense Ministry recently release a statement recommending that consumers avoid buying Xiaomi smartphones and suggests to people to throw away the ones they have after a government report found the devices had built-in censorship features.

Xiaomi’s Mi 10T 5G flagship smartphones, which is sold in Europe, have a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as “Free Tibet”, “Long live Taiwan independence” or “democracy movement”, Lithuania’s Cybersecurity agency said on Tuesday, Sept. 21.

The built-in censorship features in Xiaomi’s smartphones software is turned off for the “European Union region”, but can be turned on remotely at any time, the Defence Ministry’s National Cyber Security Centre said in the report. National Cyber Security Centre also said that Xiaomi’s phone was sending encrypted phone usage data to a server in Singapore.

A similar security flaw was also found in the Huawei’s P40 5G smartphone but none was found in OnePlus phones, another Chinese phone maker, that has a strong presence in the European Union region.

Huawei’s representative in the Baltics told the BNS news wire its phones “do not process user’s data outside the Huawei device.”

The report added the list of “censored” terms which could be blocked by the Xiaomi phone’s system apps, including the default internet browser, currently includes 449 terms in Chinese and is continuously updated.

Source: Reuters