Hapoel Tel Aviv came up short 104-100 at Wolves in Lithuania as the Reds Greek coach Dimitrios Itoudis suffered his third loss in five games across all competitions while he saw his club;’ EuroCup record drop to 6-5 on the season.

This is the Lithuanians’ first victory over Hapoel Tel Aviv, in the fourth meeting between the two teams since the beginning of last season, with only a late comeback attempt preventing the host from overtaking Hapoel in the standings based on the difference in head-to-head meetings, as Wolves lost by 5 points in the previous round of play.

A rusty Jonathan Motley returned to action for the first time since the saga surrounding him saw the big man leave the club and look for greener pastures to play in. Yam Madar continued to show that he is the new star at Hapoel while Marcus Foster recovered from a weak performance in the derby and Marcus Bingham once again provided a solid contribution as he has done in almost every game since joining the club from Hapoel Holon.

However, the Israeli league runner-up gave up no less than 19 3-pointers while shooting at a 54.3% clip, allowing their opponent to grab 12 offensive rebounds and after the 97 points they conceded in the derby, the Lithuanians scored a triple-digit amount on Hapoel in this game.

Madar scored 28 points, Foster added 17 points and Bingham put in 12 points in the loss. Anthony Cowan prod 28 points and Tre’Shaw Thurman sowed 23 points in the loss.

“Congratulations to Wolves, they were better, they deserved to win,” Hapoel coach Dimitrios Itoudis said. We started well in the first quarter, we could have opened a bigger gap if we had been more consistent in defensive rebounding and in defense in general. They made 19 three-pointers at 52 percent, you don’t see that at the highest levels in any league. There were 5-6 very difficult three-pointers. That’s what hurt us a lot today.”

The Hapoel Tel Aviv coach continued, “We’re not mean, we need to become mean. I want my team to be together, whether it’s one player or another, it doesn’t matter. We need to be mean as a team, to be tougher. We weren’t there at the level of toughness.”

Hapoel Jerusalem continued its European journey as the capital city squad tipped off against Lietkabelis in Bulgaria on gameday 11 Eurocup, and suffered a 93-87 defeat at the hands of the Lithuanians. The game opened in a very balanced and even manner, with the lead switching sides throughout the first quarter. In the second quarter, the Lithuanians managed to increase their lead to 8-points, 49-41 before halftime, thanks to a good run by Mantas Rubštavičius who offset points scored by the reds.

Yonatan Alon’s team was not thrilled by the large gap to say the least and managed to get back into the game at the start of the third quarter with a good run thanks to Jared Harper, Khadeen Carrington, Derek Ogbeide and Jeremy Morgan to knot the contest up by the end of the period at 69-69. The final frame was also quite close as the lead bouncing back and forth, but in the final minute of the clash, the Lithuanians made a very quick 7-0 run ran that decided the outcome of the game. Jerusalem is now 7-4 good for 2nd place in Eurocup play after having lost to Valencia in the previous round.

Harper scored 24 points, Carrington added 14 points while Chris Johnson and Jeremy Morgan put in 13 points a piece in the win. Rubštavičius 19 points and Oleksandr Kovolair aded 18 points in the loss.

“We didn’t take rebounds,” Jerusalem head coach Yonatan Alon said. “You can’t win without taking rebounds. They took 4-5 offensive rebounds in the last 2 minutes. They had 5 possession at those moments and that’s why they won. We can’t lose so many balls, we need to play better defense. That’s not who we are.”

Jeremy Morgan added, “We didn’t play our basketball. We lost too many balls and let them take too many rebounds. We have to play to win and we didn’t do that. We have to fix it quickly because every game counts. We have to learn from this and move forward.”