Girls Basketball: After whirlwind summer playing for Lithuanian national team, Montini’s Victoria Matulevicius set for sophomore season

Victoria Matulevicius this week will begin her first full-length high school basketball season.

She already has experience few girls her age have.

The Montini sophomore traveled to Europe in August to play for the U-16 Lithuanian national team, which competed in the FIBA Championships in Spain.

It is the second time Matulevicius, a Willowbrook resident whose dad was born and coached basketball in Lithuania and mom was born in Poland, has played for the Lithuanian team. In 2019 she played with the same girls for the U-14 Baltic Cup in Estonia.

“It was a great experience to meet new people, to sharpen up my Lithuanian for a bit, and a good opportunity to travel by myself and learn how to be independent,” Matulevicius said. “I also wanted to play for my country and the people that live there. And I wanted to improve my skills.”

Matulevicius, a 5-foot-8 guard/forward, is coming off a strong first season for what was a very young Montini team. A crafty scorer and playmaker, she averaged 14 points and 6.6 rebounds and shot 82% from the free-throw line for head coach Shannon Spanos’ first Montini team.

“She is a multi-dimensional player, she can really take anyone off the dribble and she is so lethal around the basket,” Spanos said. “That is where her European game comes in. She looks like a European player out there, especially around the hoop. She can take people off the dribble and she can hit the outside shot which she’s really worked on in the offseason.”

After traveling overseas, Matulevicius first played for the U-15 Lithuanian team at a tournament in Lithuania where they played games against Latvia, Germany and the U-16 Lithuanian team. When that tournament was over she had two weeks off and spent the time staying with her grandparents in Panevėžys, Lithuania. She came back and tried out for the team for nine days, and after making the team flew to Spain.

At the FIBA Championships in Spain Matulevicius and the U-16 team played five games over six days against Spain, Ukraine, Croatia, Serbia, and Hungary.

The 24-second shot clock, a deeper 3-point line and the overall level of play were adjustments Matulevicius had to make.

“It’s a faster game in Europe because of the shot clock; you don’t have much time to dribble the ball. You have to move the ball quickly and score as much as you can in that amount of time,” she said. “It’s harder to adjust also because the 3-point line is further way. It’s a really different game. The girls for Spain were insane. They were really fast and tall, they did everything well. There wasn’t a moment that they stopped and slowed down. I feel like it made me faster.”

Matulevicius had more opportunity to handle the ball than she said she usually does playing for Montini.

“They gave me more of an opportunity to be a point guard,” she said. “We didn’t win any games but we did play very hard and aggressive.”

“The level of play in Europe is just different; it’s a different game,” Spanos said. “She really worked on her speed and her agility and also worked on her outside shot. For us she was not a point guard but for Lithuania she was. The fact that she has taken those skills and brought it to our team, working more of the point guard position is going to help us.”

The experience was fun for Montini’s program as a whole. With the time change, Spanos said she would text Matulevicius’ Montini teammates that she was set to play at 7 a.m.

“We would get around the computer in our household and watch her,” Spanos said. “It was fun to see her play and take her game to Europe and compete at a high level. She did very well.”

Spanos looks forward to what Matulevicius can bring back to this Montini team this winter after the whirlwind summer experience, teaming up with Shannon Blacher in leading the Lady Broncos.

“She is a great teammate, the girls really like her, easy to get along with,” Spanos said. “She is soft spoken but once you get to know her she is a great teammate and a great kid to coach. Her and Shannon work very well together. They are very similar in the way they play but they feed off each other’s energy.”