Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated Hapoel Beer Sheva 104-92 as five players in yellow-and-blue scoedd in double digits to open up the Israel Winner League season with a victory. John Dibartolomeo had the hot hand from the outside with a half dozen triples while big man Marcio Santos was unstoppable inside to lead Oded Katash’s team to the win. Maccabi will now get ready for a Euroleague Double Week as they will face Barcelona and Olympiacos after having downed Hapoel Tel Aviv last week in a continental derby.

Dibartolomeo scored 18 points, Santos added 17 points and Leaf scored 13 points in the win while CJ Elleby scored 20 points as Amit Gershon and Brandon Angel each put in 16 points in the loss.

“Overall, we had a good game,” Maccabi Tel Aviv Head Coach Oded Katash began. “We came in focused for most of the minutes and we managed to deal with their aggressiveness. They had two runs when we were a bit less focused, but overall I’m happy with this win against a talented and good team, they showed that throughout many moments in the game.”

Hapoel Beer Sheva Head Coach Rami Hadar talked about the defeat, “We’re not playing well on the defensive end and it’’s very frustrating for me, disappointing. I hope we’ll do things better moving forward, but we need some kind of leadership. Defensively, this can’t continue. You just can’t play like that. It takes all the fun out of the game.”

Marcio Santos looked back at the game, “We had a great two first quarters and our energy went down a little bit in the third quarter, but we kept it high at the ed. We keep getting stronger, running and playing defense, trying our best. We are being physical, playing defense, running the court and playing hard.”

Yoav Vitlem who notched a double-double with 10 points and 11 assists shared his thoughts on the game, “I don’t think we came into the game mentally prepared and we didn’t make it hard for them, we let them play and when you let them play, you get punished. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is, I believe the goal is to push the game forward as much as possible, to play fast, at a good pace with flow.”

Roman Sorkin and Oshae Brissett opened the scoring for Maccabi Tel Aviv while Yoav Vitlem and CJ Elleby countered for Hapoel Beer Sheva, but with the score knotted up at 18-18 and 3:21 left in the first quarter, TJ Leaf, Marcio Santos and John Dibartolomeo helped the yellow-and-blue to an 11-0 run to end the period ahead 29-18.

Leaf kept scoring to get the second quarter underway, but Cody Demps, Amit Gershon and Elleby cut down the lead to 37-32 midway through the frame, but Tamir Blatt drilled home a trio of triples, Santos kept filling the basket and Lonnie Walker hit an off balance deuce to give Oded Katash’s squad a 55-41 advantage at halftime.

Yoav Vitlem continued to find the bottom of the basket to begin the third quarter, Dibartolomeo knocked down a pair of 3-pointers and Santos kept scoring while Elleby, Brandon Angel and Taryn Todd responded at the other end for Rami Hadar’s team to keep Beer Sheva hanging around but down 82-71 after thirty minutes of action.

Walker hit a pair of jumpers to start off the fourth quarter, Dibartolomeo kept nailing his shots from deep, Angel did as well but Leaf and Jeff Dowtin Jr. scored to polish off the win.