Maccabi Tel Aviv pounded Kiryat Ata 109-61 as seven players scored in double digits to take the victory and punch their ticket to the Winner Cup semifinal where they’ll meet Hapoel Jerusalem on Sunday night at the Holon Arena. Prior or their tip-off with the capital city reds, the yellow-and-blue have a Euroleague Double Week with Besiktas and Panathinaikos on the slate for Wednesday and Friday night respectively.

Yuval Levin for Kiryat Ata and John Dibartolomeo for Maccabi Tel Aviv found points for their respective teams early on while Maxim Filonenko and Roman Sorkin also scored to end the first quarter all knotted up at 18-18. Keaton Wallace knocked down his shots, Daniel Theis filled the basket, TJ Leaf put in points, David Green tried to keep Eldad Bentov’s team in the game, but buckets from Dibartolomeo and Clark gave Oded Katash’s squad a 54-36 advantage at halftime.

Madar and Sorkin got the thrid quarter underway, Dibartolomeo and Leaf scored as did Theis and Will Rayman to continue the onslaught for the yellow-and-blue while in the final frame Amit Ebo hit from almost everywhere on the court, while Jimmy Clark and Bonzie Colson also scored to wrap up the win. Theis scored 15 points, Colson added 14 points and Dibartolomeo put in 13 points in the victory while Green scored 15 points and Sharon scored 12 points in the loss.

Maccabi Tel Aviv Head Coach Oded Katash reflected on the win, “This was a good game for us as we were able to split up the minutes the way we wanted to. But the first quarter didn’t look great and that seemed to be a continuation of the Euroleague game. However, after that we played smarter but at this point in the season things aren’t going to look the way they will later on, just as we saw against ASVEL who were more aggressive than us.”

Kiryat Ata bench boss Eldad Bentov looked back at the tough loss, “We weren’t here playing the right way and there’s not much else to say about the game. The season is long and there will be some good parts and some not as good, but ultimately I’m really disappointed in the way we came into this game and our attitude.”

Jimmy Clark spoke about the victory, “We got off to a slow start but we picked it up as the guns went along. We had a well fought forty minute victory and we played together along with a push from the fans. We are always going to play up to the standard and personally I don’t want to rush getting back from a minor injury we are taking it one day at a time.”

Oz Huli talked about the defeat, “It was a tough game and against Maccabi it’s tough challenge. Things really didn’t go our way and it was hard to keep up to their aggressiveness. I played with Yam Madar in the youth levels and it was great to be able to play versus a team like Maccabi who you’ve watched for so long.”