Both Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv will be in Euroleague action on Friday night as the yellow-and-blue will host Paris Basket at their home away from home in Belgrade (22:30 Israel time) while the reds will head to Podgorica for a matchup against Anadolu EFES (20:30 Israel time).

Immediately after Yom Kippur, both teams held a training session in the respective arenas that they will be playing in Friday evening. The two head coaches gave their thoughts about their upcoming opponents as Maccabi will look to pick up their first win of the campaign after having fallen to EFES 85-78 while Hapoel want to keep the positive momentum going after downing Barcelona 103-87 earlier in the week.

Maccabi bench boss Oded Katash talked about returning to their second home in Serbia as the club ’s home games have been played abroad since the outbreak of the war with Hamas on October 7, 2023.

“It feels like home, we love being here. Of course, we prefer to be at home in Tel Aviv in front of our fans, but if not, then here they host us wonderfully. Tomorrow will be a different game. Paris is a completely different team in the pace they play and the way they defend. Everything is like full speed, like putting it on double speed. We need to be very ready, it’s going to be very intense, almost on the edge of wild, not regular basketball.”

Jaylen Hoard who will begin his second season with the team added, “Mixed emotions to be back, I would rather be playing in Menora but it feels good and we made this our second how so it’s good to be back and see some family faces. I’m excited for our forts game here. I don’t think they play like any team you’ll see in Europe. They play very fast, intense on both sides of the ball’s, sets on offense are different and their defense you have to get used to that quickly as you need to be poised and concentrated on the game plan.”

Oshae Brissett also spoke about the Paris game and what they want to do after having fallen to EFES in the season opener, “Definitely a better showing than last game I feel like we will be ready, play more aggressive and play more together just from the jump to play with the energy to get the win. We spoke about Paris already and how different they are, we will be ready for it. We have to let go of last game and moving ahead to this one with a different game plan.”

Katash gave some more thoughts about Paris, ”First of all, there were good stretches in the previous game. There are still things we need to polish and be a bit more team-oriented, but the energy was there. We came out with good body language, and I think that’s something we absolutely need. Against Paris, there’s not much time to think, because everything will happen very quickly, especially on the defensive end. And offensively, what we do need, especially for tomorrow, is to be a bit calmer, to play simpler and lose the ball less.”

Over at Hapoel, Dimitrios Itoudis, Colin Malcolm and Ish Wainright looked ahead to facing EFES, “Chatima Tova. We are preparing to play our second game in the Euroleague against a very good team, a solid team that has tons of experience having played in Finals Fours and winning the Euroleague in a new system though with many creators and many scorers. We are in good shape and we are looking forward to the game.”

Malcolm also shared his feelings, “We’re getting ready for a big game combing up after having a great win, a historic win for the club. Now it’s time to get going and continue the momentum as we play a great team in EFES who will really test us. Every night in the Euroleague is hard but we prepared well and Coach Itoudis got us ready to go.”

Finally, Ish Wainright spoke about the upcoming challenge, ”Efes is an amazing team with a lot of great players and a rich history from everything I’ve seen and heard over the years. They share the same goals as we do and have a chip on their shoulder as well. Our staff will put us in a great position to win. We just need to stay locked in and minimize our mistakes. Much respect to them, but it’s going to be a dogfight from start to finish.”