Lahti Basketball’s Erik Sajantila scored 49 points against Loimaa Bisons. The reading is the fifth highest in the Korisliiga in the 2000s.
On Tuesday, the Korisliiga saw one of the toughest performances of the 21st century, when Lahti Basketball Erik Sajantila scored 49 points and seven rebounds against Loimaa Bisons. The number of points is the league’s fifth most in the 2000s. For Finnish players, the balance is the largest since 2002, when Martti Kuisma scored 61 points against BC Jyväskylä in the Espoo Honga shirt.
This season Sajantila has recorded 103 points and 20 rebounds in three games. For comparison, the point averages of the previous two seasons were less than ten.
Despite Sajantila’s incredible performance, Lahti did not manage to open their points account for the season, and the people of Lahti are in last place in the league. The situation makes the back player born in 2001 humble.
– After all, this own record is a really tough read, but the victory stung. I would have hoped for a win more than my own points record.
In Tuesday’s game against Loimaa, Sajantila scored more than half of his team’s 88 points. Despite the personal successes of the offensive end, Sajantila believes that Lahti, which started the season weakly, will turn around with a better defensive game.
Currently, Sajantila’s statistics show that development has taken place especially in the accuracy of two-point throws. While in the player’s first season at Lahti, the two-point baskets were sunk with a little more than 30 percent accuracy, now it has steadily reached already 60 percent successes. On a personal level, the game goes well and the reason can be found in training.
– A lot of work has been done here for many years, and especially last summer we trained hard and systematically with the physical trainer and individual skills with the head coach.
The successes have fueled self-confidence, which can be seen in the player’s courage on the field.
– It feels like every throw I take goes in. That too has come through training.
Sajantila’s career can be considered exceptional, as the back player born in 2001 has started to build his career in the domestic Korisliiga. In 2017, the Honga student moved to the Helsinki Basketball Academy, from where the journey continued in the middle of the 2020-2021 season to the Korisliiga in the ranks of Lahti.
Many young people move from the domestic basketball incubator HBA to university leagues abroad, but Sajantila chose differently. In the second year of high school, Sajantila noticed that at that stage the university fields were not for her.
– I don’t feel that my own style of play would have been suitable for university fields at that time.
Sajantila had a clear plan to head to the Korisliiga at the end of 2020 and Lahti was chosen as the address. Sajantila’s goals are abroad, but when it comes to milestones in his playing career, he keeps his feet on the ground.
– At the beginning of the season, I said that first you have to show that you are among the best in the Korisliiga, and then you can go abroad.
Sajantila has not taken his plans too far, although in the future Spain and Germany could be suitable options for his type of player.