August 1, 2008
From Lithuania with a goal
Woodside Priory is best known in Bay Area basketball circles for 7 -foot Greg Somogyi who will be playing on scholarship at UC Santa Barbara in the fall. Besides the local kids on the roster, the Portola Valley-based school’s basketball squad is a veritable United Nations of hoops with players from Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania.
It’s the latter country that 6-foot-3 senior-to-be Panther backcourter Ignas Pavilonis represents.
Pavilonis joins a growing list of Lituanians who go to school in the U.S.
For the unfamiliar, Lithuania has quite the basketball tradition and its players have dotted many a college basketball roster. There’s Devidas Dulkys now at Florida State, Duke’s Martynas Pocius, Virginia’s Laurynas Mikalauskas, Ceslovas Kucinskas at Coppin State and many others.
Here’s Pavilonis in his own words both about himself and how his Bay Area Warriors club team recently fared in Las Vegas:
My name is Ignas Pavilonis. I`m 17 years old and I`m from Lithuania, a small country in Europe but a very well known one because of its basketball traditions and great players. Everybody knows Zydrunas Ilgauskas from the Cleveland Cavaliers or Sarunas Marciulionis who used to play for the Warriors.
Why do I play basketball instead of soccer or other sports? I actually have never thought why am I playing basketball instead of any other sport but I can say that I love it and I can`t imagine my life without it. It’s been almost 10 years since I started to play and my high school coach said a phrase once which stayed in my head and keeps me going and pushing to work hard and give everything I have: "You can always do more."
Why did that stay in my head? I believe in working hard every day because that’s the only way you can get better and improve your basketball skills to reach your goals. Being from Europe and with almost all the NBA European players being very good shooters, I think shooting is my best basketball skill now. I`ve been working a lot on my release and I can say that I`m a good shooter.
I`m trying to improve my ballhandling because I broke my thumb, had surgery and was out for nine weeks so I lost my skills and I`ve been having some difficulties.
My biggest goal now is to get a basketball scholarship to go to college here in the United States. I definitely have good enough grades to go to college here but I think I need to improve as a basketball player to get a scholarship.
Everybody is probably curious about how I got to this country and Woodside Priory School. First, I`ll talk a bit about the team I played for back in Lithuania and how came to hear about WPS. I live in a small town called Silute and I played for my town`s main team. In Lithuania, we don’t have high school leagues but we have club teams.
I have a lot of friends who play and go to school in this country and they said that I should look for a school in the United States where I could get good education. I was searching on the internet and I found Woodside Priory and couple other schools. I emailed the WPS admissions office and started to talk to the people. I forgot about the other schools after a couple of days because the people at Woodside Priory were very nice and friendly. I got accepted and that’s how I came here.
Basketball is different in the U.S. because of different rules. I remember I had problems at my first games, committing a lot of violations and traveling almost every time.
I play for the Bay Area Warriors team out of San Francisco and on July 22 we went to the Main Event basketball tournament in Las Vegas. The city of gambling, casinos and tourists from all over the world was changed into a battle zone as players from different teams and different states came to compete in front of college coaches.
We arrived late in the evening and settled down in the rental house. The next morning we had a game against Virginia Squires. They had two Lithuanian players who caused us problems in the second half. We were up by two points after the first half, but once the second half started we let them go and they got on fire and we lost. The final score was 60 to 47 and our start didn’t look good.
The game we lost left us with a bitter taste and reminded us to play hard. The next day we faced the team from Wisconsin coached by former NBA player Terry Porter. Once again we lost and the final score was 60 to 41.
It started to look that we would never cross the 40 points line but we turned it up and won against the San Antonio Scorpions after they were up by 22 points. The final score was 79 to 72. Forgetting about the earlier games, we celebrated after visiting the local grocery store and coming back with bags full of food and drinks. Of course, it ended late with pillow fights and players running around and screaming.
The pool games were now done and we moved to the silver bracket where our first opponent was a team called the Rocklin Warriors. We didn’t have any problems with that team and won the game by 10. The final score was 80 to 70. After we won the game against the Scorpions, our team became more confident and started to play better. -- no more stupid shots or turnovers.
We won one more game playing the Utah Snowbears -- the final score was 70 to 61. This was the last easy game and now it was do or die. Everybody knew our next game wasn’t going to be easy. The players didn’t fool around at the house and tried to get as much rest as possible so they could perform well at the next game.
However, the rest didn’t help us.
We played against a team coached by NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton called Higher Hoops and Stockton`s son was the starting point guard. They shot the lights out and we lost by 21 points.
That game ended the tournament for us.
I think this was the best tournament because we played against a lot of good teams and good players. What was the strategy in dealing with their best players? We usually try to put our best defender on their best player so he can press him and not let him score but sometimes we try a zone defense if the opposing team is doing a good job and shooting well.
Our goal was to play as hard as possible and win all the games because only when you play hard can you become better. Of course, probably the biggest goal was to play well in front of all the college coaches and get noticed but sometimes you get so much into the game that you don’t even notice other people around and just play hard.
I don’t think there were many highlights but I`m sure everybody enjoys watching a good team playing good basketball, spoiling the audience with dunks and nice moves and I can say that there were a lot of nice dunks and moves.
I`m going back to Europe in a couple days to visit my family and my friends so my biggest goal is to rest at least for a couple days and give my body a break. But I will definitely start working out and develop my ballhandling skills while I`m still in Lithuania but I also have some studying to do too. It`s been a great season for me and I think I became a better player after all these games.