FOR the second successive evening, England were on the verge of a shock victory over Lithuania in an international basketball match at the University of Worcester.

With just over 12 minutes to go, England were in the lead at 64-62 but the highly-experienced Lithuanians pulled away in the last quarter to win by 14 points.

They had looked far from comfortable at times and really had to dig deep to find the points to beat a well-organised English team coached by Worcester Wolves’ Paul James.

James started the game with the same five as the previous evening.

Four young British players based in USA colleges — Justin Robinson, Ogo Adegboye, Matthew Bryan-Amaning and 6fts 11ins centre Mike Williams — joined captain James Jones from the Everton Tigers and it was Williams who scored the game’s first basket.

The first quarter was very competitive indeed with both teams having to work extremely hard to gain domination.

Although Lithuania scored nearly three times more points in the paint as England, the game remained close at 21-19 to the hosts.

Big centre Martynas Andriuskevicius was scoring well from close to the basket for the Lithuanians and he also landed some long-range field goals.

The game changed dramatically in the second quarter as the visitors suddenly exploded with a 23-0 burst to establish a 44-25 lead which saw England unable to score for more than five minutes.

A fantastic response from the England team followed, however, as James urged his team to regroup and he saw three successive threes, two from Robinson and one from Ashley Hamilton, reduce the deficit to 10 points at half-time.

More superb basketball from the charged-up English team saw them complete a 20–5 run of their own and the game was in the balance with Robinson leading the way with 26 points which included five maximums.

BBL players Jones, Tanner Adu, Sam Cricelli and Tayo Ogedengbe all made useful contributions and, as the vital fourth quarter started, the Lithuanians played some good defence against the English onslaught.

The young English team could not maintain the momentum that had taken them into the lead and the Lithuanians dominated the final 10 minutes to record a hard-earned 92-78 victory.

The Lithuanian strength in depth had shown as their bench scored more than half of their total points and they had six players making double-digit personal scores.

But the England team did well to provide a strong challenge to one of Europe’s premier teams.