Franklin & Marshall point guard Vakaris Grauslys hails from Vilnius, Lithuania, a place so unfamiliar to his teammates that they joke with him: Do they have cars there? Wifi?
In point of fact Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, is home to over a half-million people, making it the largest city in the Baltics. And one of its more notable exports is basketball players.
Arvydas Sabonis, who in the 1980s might have been the greatest player in the world (and who, alas, arrived in the NBA only after injuries had diminished him), is also from Vilnius. So too is his son Domantas, currently the Sacramento Kings’ center and a guy who has fashioned a decade-long NBA career.
Another present-day NBAer, Denver backup center Jonas Valanciunas, is from Vilnius, as is Sarunas Marciulionis, who played for four teams between 1989 and ‘97.
Besides standing on the shoulders of those guys, Grauslys (shown above, in a photo by David Sinclair) has swapped one tradition for another by continuing F&M’s historically great point-guard play. The Dips have seldom lacked for it over the years, having seen five guys who played that position – Brad Markey, Will Lasky, Dave Jannetta, Duran Searles and Georgio Milligan – achieve All-America status. (Another, Bob Manaskie, was the engine of the 1979 Final Four team. He remains the school’s all-time assist leader.)
Whether Grauslys scales those heights remains to be seen. Twice an All-Centennial Conference second-teamer in his career, the 6-1 senior now finds himself quarterbacking a team that carried a 13-2 record into Wednesday’s game at Haverford and is seeking to defend its CC regular-season and tournament titles.
A four-year starter, he is also in bounce-back mode after struggling last season with a series of injuries, none more nagging than one to the thumb on his right (shooting) hand. He said he sprained it early on and continued to aggravate it, the result being that his shooting suffered. He made just 38.5 percent of his attempts from the field and 34.2 percent from 3-point range, far below the norms he had achieved during his breakout sophomore season.
“Most of the season, I had to play with it taped up, which was restricting my movement,” he said. “And it was my right hand, so it was hard to shoot. … Especially with shooting, it was really frustrating.”
He’s fine now – “knock on wood,” he said – and his accuracy reflects it: respective percentages of .439/.379/.760 from the field, arc and foul line, resulting in 15 points a game, second on the team to forward Kevin Nowoswiat (16.1), his classmate.
One thing that never left Grauslys, come thumb or high water, was his aggressiveness. His coach, Nick Nichay, calls him “a downhill player,” but that only begins to describe him. He attacks his defender, attacks the paint. His teammates call him a “free throw merchant,” and well, he doesn’t deny it. He has attempted 500 foul shots in 96 career games – i.e., over five a game – including 100 in 15 this season.
“Part of it,” he said with a smile, “is probably I do flop sometimes.”
And indeed, he does wind up on the floor a lot. That hell-bent approach has a downside beyond health – he has turned the ball over 49 times in 15 games this season, just two fewer than he did in 28 last year – but it also has obvious benefits.
Witness the Dec. 30 game against Lancaster Bible College, when Grauslys invaded the paint in the closing seconds with the Dips down one, then kicked the ball out to sophomore guard Steve Donahue for the decisive 3-pointer.
And witness a game four days later against No. 12 Virginia Wesleyan, when Grauslys again went to the rim as the clock wound down, this time in a tie game. His layup spilled off, but as VW’s Amari Moorer rebounded and attempted to head downcourt, F&M’s Franklin Jones poked the ball free. Nowoswiat collected it and knocked down a jumper to win it.
That was part of a 12-game winning streak, following a season-opening loss to Elizabethtown. The streak ended at Gettysburg on Jan. 14, but F&M rebounded by beating No. 24 Johns Hopkins last Saturday.
“We’ve got kids that find ways to win,” Nichay said of his team, which is attempting to improve on a 21-7 finish in ‘24-25, ending with a blowout home loss to Catholic in the first round of NCAAs.
Again, consider where Grauslys is from. Consider that he attended a basketball academy run by Marcilulionis, and that one of his teammates was Marciulionis’ son Augustas, who played at Mount St. Mary’s and is now part of the Lakers’ G-League team. Oh, and their team’s biggest rival was a team from a school run by the elder Sabonis, in the city of Kaunas.
You emerge from a crucible like that, and of course there is going to be a certain skill level. Of course the competitive fires are going to burn hot.
Grauslys came to the U.S. in 2020, landing as a high school junior at West Nottingham Academy, a small boarding school in Cecil County, Md. The pandemic raged, and his team’s games were few.
“I joke, it was kind of like jail,” he said, “because we couldn’t even go to each others’ dorm rooms.”
His senior year was far better, but when it came time to look for a college, his options were limited. There were feelers from the University of Maine, he said, but they didn’t amount to much. He looked at some Division II schools, but then thought better of it.
“I never really wanted to go to Division II,” he said, “just because back then, from what I heard, the academics are not really great in Division IIs.”
He remembers his visit to F&M as being unremarkable – that he saw a little bit of practice, walked around the campus and listened to the pitch of Nick Monroe, then a Dips assistant. But the clincher was the international scholarship then available at the school.
“My main reason why I came here was because they gave me a lot of money,” he said.
He hit the ground running, and hasn’t stopped since.
“He’s tough as nails,” Nichay said.
Nowoswiat, a three-year starter himself, said he has “a special bond” with Grauslys, that the two of them have “great synergy.” And certainly they will have a lot to say about how this season plays out. While Jones and Donahue are reliable players, while the center tandem of Bohdan Biekietov, a freshman from Ukraine, and Carter Lawrence has much to offer and while there is decent depth, the two seniors know the ropes, know the conference, know there are certain expectations.
“I feel most of the responsibility (is) on us to just produce,” Grauslys said.
Hey, fine with him. He believes he is at his best in the biggest games and the toughest environments – that he rises to the occasion when the Dips are on the road, in a tight spot and the opposing fans are screaming.
“I like pressure,” he said, “and yeah, I say, I embrace it.”
All in a day’s work, as he attempts to continue not just one tradition, but two. As he shines a light on his hometown, and carries the baton given to him by F&M’s previous point guards. Neither has proven to be a heavy burden. Rather, they have served as dual springboards as he goes hurtling along – as he keeps moving forward. Always forward.