Hapoel Jerusalem moved yet another step towards securing home court advantage all the way through the EuroCup playoffs after smashing Aris 96-77 in Thessaloniki. With the win, the Reds improve their record to 12-2, the best in the entire competition with four game remaining in the regular season. Yonaton Alon’s squad set the tone early with a 27-16 first quarter as they never looked back to take the lopsided victory which saw also win the battle of boards 40-27. Next up for Hapoel is an Israeli league home game against Kiryat Ata on Saturday night at 20:15 which will be followed up by another EuroCup clash versus Bahcesehir in a game that the Reds will host in Belgrade.

Jared Harper and Khadeen Carrington both scored 17 points while Cassius Winston added 14 points in the victory while Bryce Jones scored 17 points and Amine Noua put in 13 points in the loss.

“I’m very happy with the way we played, both offensively and defensively,” Hapoel Jerusalem Head Coach Yonatan Alon said at the end of the game. “We shared the ball well, we were intense on defense, we made mistakes but corrected them during the game and now our eyes are on the next goal. We have eleven consecutive wins in the EuroCup but I count them one at a time and now we need to count one more, that’s all that matters.”

“We didn’t accomplish what we asked for before this game, to put up a fight on rebounds. This is the comment on the game and on the last five games,” Aris bench boss Igor Milicic exclaimed. “This is embarrassing, especially for the bigs. Whatever we do, whatever we practice to improve this, it’s pretty much garbage. You have to want to do it, you are getting paid for it, so you better do it. If you don’t do it, there’s no place for you here, with this mentality.”

Khadeen Carrington shared his thoughts on the win, “We had a goal from the beginning of the season, obviously, we wanted to finish top two. We still have a way to go, with four more games, so we have to stay focused until it’s all done. We came in here, where there’s a tough crowd, we didn’t want to give them anything, so we jumped out on them early. Credit to the team and coaching staff, everybody was focused from the beginning.”