Hapoel Holon mounted a late second half comeback to slip by Wurzburg 71-69 and keep the purples hopes alive to move on to the next stage of the Basketball Champions League competition. Elijah Mitrou-Long starred down the stretch to move Guy Goodes’s team into second place with a 3-2 record in Group A with their final game slated for December 18th at Nanterre.

Netanel Artzi and Dakari Tucker paced Hapoel Holon over the course of the first half but Zac Seljaas along with Tyrese Williams and Jhivvan Jackson gave Wurzburg a 40-30 advantage at halftime. Seljaas continued to bump up the lead, but Elijah Mitrou-Long started to score in bunches and hit a triple to give the purples a 68-67 lead while Michale Kyser put in a 3-point play to secure the victory.

Mitrou-Long scored 21 points, Artzi added 14 points and Tucker chipped in with 12 points in the win. Seljaas and Jackson each scored 17 points in the loss.

The game MVP Elijah Mitrou-Long spoke about the win, “Having coach out try in me when I havent been playing my best, but they have been giving me teh courage and trying me. I am just trying to stay consist in my work and my teammates telling me too trust me.

“It is very difficult to describe the game because the last two weeks the team went through major changes,” Holon bench boss Guy Goodes began. “Our point guard Niv MIsgav left as did our big man Marcus Bingham who went to Hapoel Tel Aviv for big money so we had to change the system and we came here with a 7.5 player rotation. We knew it would be a tough game against a well coached team that is in first place in our BCL group.”

“We never really practiced with the lineup we played with and we were also without our center Idan Zalmanson who was hurt in our last Israeli league game. While we didn’t look good, effort, hard work and talent got us through. I am happy we got through this and we won the 4th quarter 22-11. Each guy was exhausted after playing so many straight minutes but the win belongs to our players and our fans. No one believed that we could win with this roster but this is the beauty of sports and that is why we are in this business.”

“We were leading most of the game but we didn’t finish it with a win,” Wurzburg Head Coach Sasa Filipovski said. “Our efficiency rating was higher but that is not the result. The last 5 minutes we misses a lot of layups and we didn’t stop Mitrou-Long who scored 18 points in the second half.”