Maccabi Tel Aviv fell to Olympiacos 100-93 as former Euroleague MVP Sasha Vezenkov proved to be unstoppable for the hosts to take the victory. The yellow-and-blue jumped out to an early lead thanks to Jimmy Clark and Roman Sorkin, however, Vezenkov began to heat up while Evan Fournier also scored as will to grab a 58-34 lead at halftime as the hosts cruised to the win.

The loss drops Maccabi’s record to 9-14 with the back end of the Greek doubt week coming up on Thursday night when Oded Katash’s squad welcomes Panathinaikos to Yad Eliyahu. Sorkin scored 21 points, Jeff Dowtin scored 15 points while Jaylen Hoard and Oshae Brissett both scored 11 points in the loss. Vezenkov scored 28 points, Nikola Milutinov added 13 points, Fournier put in 12 points and Thomas Walkup scored 10 points in the win.

Oded Katash spoke about the defeat, “For three quarters we did a good job and executed our game plan against a very talented team. We lost our minds on both ends of the court and that caused us to lose the game during those 10 minutes in the second quarter. We need to learn from this in order to compete at this level.”

“We showed character in the second half, but as I said, we need to gain confidence so we can play the right way, like we did in the other three quarters. On the other hand, when things don’t go our way, we need to learn not to suffer from it, and that comes with experience,” the bench boss concluded.

Jimmy Clark spoke about the loss, “We got off to a decent start but we didn’t really keep the run that we wanted to at the end of the first half and going into the second half. We put up a good fight in the second half and that really helped us comeback into the game and cut down their lead. Credit to the team and coaching staff for keeping us in the game. I think that if we had the fight that we had in the second half in the second quarter I think we would have been in a better position than we were.”

Marcio Santos added, “We had 3 good quarters, but in order to get a win versus a team like Olympiacos you need to have 4. The positive side was that we didn’t give up, we were fighting for the game till the last minute.”

Jimmy Clark with a pair from deep and a triple by Roman Sorkin along with points from Jaylen Hoard got Maccabi Tel Aviv off to a hot start but Sasha Vezenkov responded for Olympiacos and scored15 points in period to give the hosts a 27-24 lead. Tyson Ward put in points, Tyrique Jones scored inside and Evan Fournier hit his shots from deep to quickly bump the lead up to double digits in favor of the Greek squad as they headed into halftime with a 58-34 advantage.

Thomas Walkup and Sorkin began the second half by trading baskets, Oshae Brissett and Donta Hall did the same while Jeff Dowtin, Will Rayman and Iffe Lundberg all went from deep to cut the lead to single digits but Hall and Venzenkov bumped the scoff back up to 76-62 after thirty minutes of action. Marcio Santos and Clark dialed up long distance, Hoard and Ward scored at either end of the court, Dowtin and Sorkin scored, Nikola Milutinov responded as did Vezenkov to wrap up the victory.