BEIJING (Olympics) – Russia staged a superb fourth-quarter comeback against Lithuania and took the lead only to lose 86-79 on Thursday.

The Baltic giants overcame a game-high 25 points from JR Holden to win for the third time while the Russians, last year’s EuroBasket winners, slumped to a second defeat in three games. Andrei Kirilenko had 17 points but made just 10 of 19 free throws for the Russians.

Rimantas Kaukenas, who battled his way back from a serious knee injury suffered earlier this year to make Lithuania’s Olympic team, led his side with 20 points while Ramunas Siskauskas scored 16 and pulled down seven rebounds.

The victory was extra sweet for Lithuania because Russia beat them in the semi-finals of last year’s EuroBasket.

"It's a good win, there's no question about it,” Lithuania’s veteran point guard Sarunas Jasikevicius said.

“It puts us in a good position to fight for the first place in the group.

"Let's try to forget it and think about Croatia. That's what you need to do in these tournaments, move on to the next.

"We are taking it one more game at a time. We know what we can do. We know what we can't do. We just take it one game at a time and hope that luck will be with us.”

Lithuania have now won two thrillers.

They edged Argentina in their first game when Linas Kleiza hit a long three-pointer with just 2.1 seconds remaining.

The Lithuanians were on top for most of the game on Thursday and when Ksistof Lavrinovic scored at the start of the fourth quarter, they had a 71-62 lead.

But Andrei Vorontsevich, Viktor Khryapa (a three-pointer) and Kirilenko all scored to bring Russia to within 71-69.

David Blatt’s team finally tied the contest at 73-73 on a pair of Khryapa free throws with 6:49 to go and took the lead with two more from Kirilenko.

But Lithuania went back on top after baskets from Simas Jasaitis and Kaukenas.

Holden answered to level the scores again at 77-77 but Lithuania finished the game on a 9-2 run.

Siskauskas scored and following a miss from three-point range from Holden, Jonas Maciulis drove a nail in the Russian coffin with a three-ball for an 82-77 lead just three minutes from the end.

Two Kaukenas free throws extended the advantage to seven, but Khryapa scored with 1:43 left and was fouled on the play to give Blatt’s team hope.

He missed the free throw, but Victor Keyru claimed the offensive rebound and twice had chances to score down low but missed and Lithuania finally rebounded.

"It was a tough game between two good teams really determined to win,” Khryapa said to FIBA.com.

“It was a good game for people to watch.”

Khryapa had 11 points, nine rebounds and four steals in an outstanding effort by a player who said he’s now “85%” recovered from an ankle injury that nearly knocked him out of the Olympics.

"I don't think this defeat will affect us, we played hard,” Khryapa said. “We are disappointed but we can now look to our next game against Australia and move on."

Both the Aussies and Russians will go into that game with 1-2 records.

Jasikevicius believed he and his teammates claimed a major scalp.

"Russia has excellent players, they have known each other for a while whether in the national team or playing for CSKA, they have a very good coach,” he said.

“They made things difficult for us.

“David (Blatt) is a very offensive coach. The Russian national team is playing very attractive basketball, very fast.

“They created a lot of mismatches because so many of them are exactly the same in size.”

Lithuania, semi-finalists at the Olympics four years ago, are starting to look like good bets to reach the podium but Jasikevicius says they have a lot of improving to do.

"I didn't think we played very well today, especially defensively,” he said.

“We were a couple of times in bonus situations and we fouled them, put them on the line for easy points.

“It seems like we were controlling the game a little bit better than they were but we were never able to pull away."

FIBA