Hapoel HaEmek stunned Hapoel Jerusalem 69-65 as Niv Misgav, Cameron Henry and Kyler Edwards paced the visitors to the victory at the Arena in the capital city. The reds committed 26 turnovers in the game which allowed the visitors to take advantage of the miscues and come away with the tough win.

Misgav went from the inside and outside as Kyler Edwards also found points early on for Hapoel HaEmek while Khadeen Carrington answered for Hapoel Jerusalem as Anthony Lamb and Austin Wiley began filling the basket to give the reds a 32-27 advantage at halftime. Yovel Zoosman and Josiah Jordan James scored to start off the third quarter, Misgav continued to be the main man for HaEmek and Aaron Wheeler scored from deep to give Sharon Avrahami’s team a 51-50 lead after thirty minutes of action.

Cameron Henry and Lucas Goldenberg scored while Gil Noyovitch also put in points, Jared Harper started filling the basket but free throws from Henry and Edwards closed out the win for HaEmek. Misgav and Edwards each scored 15 points and Henry added 13 points while Harper scored 18 points and Carrington put in 12 points in the loss.

“We showed great character and played terrific defense,” Hapoel HaEmek Head Coach Sharon Avrahami said. “The offense had issues and we had trouble hitting our shots. But really I’m so proud of the players being able to hold them to so few points. I’d rather win a game like this than one that is high scoring and we saw the keys on defense were that we switched hard especially late in the game which surprised Jerusalem as well as our aggressiveness.”

“These are things we see from a team that are struggling,” Hapoel Jerusalem Head Coach Yonatan Alon began. “We need to find a way out of this, the fans are upset and they have the right to be, but that’s not my focus right now. The players are what I am focusing on, we are playing without confidence and we are not executing. You can’t win when there are 26 turnovers and that’s way too many. I know how to get out of this and I’ll do the best that I can in order to do so.”

Kyler Edwards spoke about the win, “When we work hard we see the results and now we see the results. These last two games were good but I can score zero points and if we win I’ll be happy. We are aggressive on defense and we made sure to be up close to them which created the turnovers.“

Anthony Lamb spoke about the loss. “I played terrible and I turned over the ball myself five times as well and cost my team the game. We can talk about the turnovers but they brought me here to perform and I let my team down and we have to work to get better. We can make any excuses we want but at the end of the day a lot of teams travel a lot and it’s our job to show up everyday and perform and that what we get paid to do. When i don’t it’s frustrating as I know it’s my job. We have to look in the mirror and get better, that’s all you can do. When one of the better players goes 1/9 with 5 turnovers it’s kind of hard to beat any team so I’ll put that on me.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv downed Bnei Herzliya 114-99 as half a dozen players scored in double digits to hand the yellow-and-blue the win at the HaYovel Arena. Herzliya grabbed the early lead as Max Heidegger scored at will but Oded Katash’s squad came back with points a plenty from John Dibartolomeo, Roman Sorkin and Tamir Blatt who orchestrated the offense and hand Maccabi the victory. Dibartolomeo scored 18 points, Sorkin added 16 points and Blatt dropped 13 points while Heidegger scored a game high 29 points for the hosts.

Maccabi Tel Aviv Head Coach Oded Katash said after the game, “We knew we were coming into a game in a tough place. A very talented team, especially offensively, that plays at a high pace. For most of the minutes, we played okay. In the first half, we gave up 20 points from fast breaks that came from our turnovers and our shot selection. When we executed our offense properly, we managed to pull away. We went through a tough week. We’re facing a very difficult week ahead, tomorrow we’ll finally have a day off after a long time, to recover and be ready for a challenging week in the EuroLeague.”

Herzliya bench boss Yehu Orland gave his thoughts about the game, “We are dealing with competitive sports and when you are if you don’t win then you have to be disappointed. The effort was there from the guys which I am happy about despite not having center Chinanu Onuaku with us due to an injury. He’s very important for us and he should be fine.”