Twelve years ago, when the Soviet Union ruled Lithuania, its 3.6 million citizens could only dream of independence. Tonight, Lithuania’s Laisve-Kaunas club team will play the University of Wisconsin’s women’s basketball team, and the players will demonstrate on the court how much has changed.
While the Badgers prepare for their second exhibition game, they focus on a competitive college-basketball season. The Lithuanian players have played in a vastly different atmosphere from that of their American counterparts.
Growing up under Soviet rule, basketball for the Lithuanian women was far less about enjoying a sport than about national pride.
When their nation separated from the Soviet Union in 1990, Lithuania was forced to cope with a major transition away from East Bloc politics. Today, one of the biggest issues in the country is that the European Union has excluded it from a trade alliance made up of mostly Western countries.
Although Lithuania was the first republic to break away from Soviet rule, it remains a major pathway for immigrants moving from Asia to Europe. The European Union ambassador to Lithuania says he can see the progress the nation has made over the last decade but does not consider it likely Lithuania will join the Union in the near future.
“If we compare the situation now with the one that existed two or three years ago, it has improved dramatically,” Ambassador Henrik Schmieglow said.
For the Laisve-Kaunus basketball team members, they say the most dramatic change has been its latitude to travel internationally. This trip to America would have been impossible 12 years ago.
Freedom, in this case, means losing by 40 points in front of diminutive crowds.
Since beginning its tour Nov. 5, Laisve-Kaunus lost to Northern Iowa, 105-67 in front of 700 fans, and 97-55 to Iowa.
But the Big Ten is so foreign to the Lithuanian players that the losses pale to the experience. Wisconsin has not been picked among the NCAA’s Top 25 teams this season, but Laisve-Kaunus finds it significant that its American counterparts can take place in such a democratic process.
Lithuania’s president Valdas Admakus seemed nearly as unlikely 12 years ago as a foreign basketball tour. Elected in 1998 by 0.7 of a percentage point, Admakus was put in charge of a nation trying to rebuild after decades of totalitarian rule.
Ten of the Lithuanian players were eligible to vote in the election of 1998 in which Admakus was first elected president, and all but four of them will have the opportunity to vote for their president Dec. 22.
Admakus was a huge underdog in that election, like this group of Lithuanians on American basketball courts. But the team seems to draw its will to win from their nation’s political leader.
Ingrida Jonkute, Jovita Jutelyre and Valdone Sakalauskiene scored double-figure point totals against Northern Iowa, and Jutelyre and Jonkute led the team in scoring against Iowa.
The Laisve-Kaunas team managed to shoot just 32 percent from the floor against Iowa and were 0-8 from behind the three-point arch, so the Lithuanian team will bring a much different style of play to the Kohl Center.
“I think it will be a good experience for us to play a team from another country,” said UW captain Leah Hefte. “We really don’t know anything about them, so we’re just going to go out there and play our game and focus on us and hopefully come away with a win.”
The Badgers want to see an example of different styles to prepare for a non-conference season, before returning to the Big Ten.
The Lithuanians will hope to learn something about the world in a basketball game against a Wisconsin team with a very different perspective of freedom before returning to Eastern Europe.
