Israel's under-20 national team closed out its FIBA U20 EuroBasket campaign on a sour note on Sunday, falling 95-79 to Lithuania in the ninth-place classification game at Arena Stožice II in Ljubljana. The defeat left the young blue-and-whites 10th of 16 teams in Europe's top division, with Lithuania claiming ninth.
For a half, Israel looked the likelier side to finish inside the top ten. Lithuania shaded a tight opening quarter 19-18, but Israel answered by taking the second 23-20 to go into the locker room in front, 41-39 — a scoreline confirmed quarter by quarter in FIBA's official record of the game.
The match turned decisively after the break. Lithuania piled on 30 points to Israel's 18 in the third quarter, taking a 69-59 lead — the first double-digit gap of the contest — and kept pressing in the fourth to stretch the margin to 21 points before Israel trimmed the final deficit to 16.
Gabrielius Jokubauskas did the bulk of the damage for Lithuania, finishing with a game-high 31 points on six three-pointers, according to FIBA's official box score. Israeli match reports initially carried 34, but that figure is FIBA's listed efficiency rating for Jokubauskas, not his points total.
On the Israeli side, FIBA's leaders card credits Yonatan Keller with 16 points, with Oren Sahar also on 16 and leading the game with eight assists. Captain Rany Belaga added a team-high eight rebounds in what was his final game of the tournament.
The loss capped a campaign of real swings in Ljubljana. Israel went 2-1 in Group D — wins over Romania and the Czech Republic bookending a defeat to host Slovenia — before dropping into the 9-16 classification bracket.
There, a lopsided win over Italy guaranteed Israel's place in Division A, Europe's top flight, for next summer, and a 96-74 dismissal of Latvia in the 9-12 semifinal set up Sunday's meeting with Lithuania. Belaga starred in that Latvia game with a 32-point triple-double, which FIBA noted as just the eighth in the competition's history.
It was the first major tournament for the reserve programme's new coaching staff, installed ahead of this summer. A 10th-place finish is a step back from 2025, when Israel's under-20s reached the quarterfinals and ended the championship sixth, and the Israeli match report carried no post-game comment from the bench.
Still, the bottom line for the programme is survival at the top table: Israel will play Division A again in 2027. It leaves Ljubljana with a core led by Belaga — newly signed with Hapoel Jerusalem — plus Sahar and Keller, all of whom produced against elite European opposition. Serbia, meanwhile, took the tournament title in Ljubljana.
