Hapoel Holon defeated Hapoel Haifa 89-71 as Marcus Bingham dropped 27 points in the club’s first win of the season. Iftach Ziv, Jalen Adams and Marcus Bingham scored for Hapoel Holon while Matt Coleman, Cameron Young and Tyler Bey countered for Hapoel Haifa as the Purples went into halftime with a 40-38 advantage. Adams and Bingham kept finding the bottom of the basket for Guy Goodes’s team as Jaylen Johnson, Willy Workman and Young tried to keep Elad Hasin’s team close but 3-pointers by Niv Misgav and Dakarai Tucker along with one from deep by Bingham plus a dunk closed out the win.

Bingham scored 17 points, Adams added 17 points and Ziv chipped in with 13 points in the win while Coleman scored 17 points, Young put in 15 points and Johnson scored 10 points in the loss.

“At the end of the day I’m happy that we won in a game that we had some good and bad moments,” Holon Head Coach Guy Goodes said. “We lost the ball a number of times and we didn’t have the correct focus. We also had this issue in the Basketball Champions League and we have to improve on that aspect of our game. But our defense was excellent and everything that we need will come with time. “

“We can split this game up into three parts,” Haifa coach Elad Hasin began. One was we played well but we didn’t know how to really take advantage of that fact and allowed Holon to get back into the game. The second part was that we were there with our intensity and the third part is where we weren’t in the game and we can’t raise the white flag and I feel that we did just that because this wasn’t an 18-point game. Holon has already played a number of games in the BCL and we will have to go back and look at this game because there were moments that we were as good as Holon.”

The game MVP Marcus Bingham looked back at the contest, “It was a good game against a good club where I had played last season so this was a special game for me and I wanted to play well in order to set the tone for the season. At halftime we fixed the little things after the first half and Coleman who we wanted to stop ending up going down with an injury and we took advantage of that. We knew we had to stop him and we gathered together as a team.”

Gil Noyovitch also spoke about the game, “We played against a very good team, at times we looked very good and at times a little less so. For me to be playing in the top league is very exciting, you work all your life for this moment. First and foremost, I bring a lot of fight and passion to my game. It will be an exciting season.”

Hapoel Galil Elyon cruised past Hapoel Gilboa Galil 93-77 to win the battle of the Galilee in a game that was played in Gan Ner. Lukas Goldenberg led the way for Guni Izraeli’s team with 21 points, Marcus Carr added 18 points and Lior Carreira put in 14 points in the win. Ish El Amin scored 24 points as Gur Lavi added 23 points in the loss.