Hapoel Jerusalem crushed Maccabi Ramat Gan 87-61 to punch their ticket to the semifinals with a 3-0 sweep as they will now play Hapoel Tel Aviv in a best-of-3 series for the right to play in the finals. Yovel Zoosman set the tone early for the reds while Jared Harper also scored for the hosts as Keyshawn Feazell countered for the visitors to keep it close after the opening quarter, but from there it was all Yonatan Alon’s squad as Khadeen Carrington, Jeremy Morgan, Justin Smith and Nimrod Levi continued to fill the basket with ease to close out the win.

Smith scored 16 points while Harper, Morgan, Levi and Zoosman all scored 11 points in the victory. Feazell and Kendale McCullum each scored 13 points in the loss.

“I feel very good that we won,” Hapoel Jerusalem Head Coach Yonatan Alon began. “I’m not taking it for granted that we swept Hapoel Ramat Gan as they are a very good team and have an excellent coach. As for Hapoel Tel Aviv it will be a very tough series and they won the EuroCup and they have a lot of money and good players as well as a good coach but we’ve beaten them before and I hope we will do that again.”

“We’re disappointed as to how we ended the season,” Ramat Gan Head Coach Shmulik Brenner said. “We had a roster that was not playing for us the majority of the season. We played very well in the Basketball Champions League and we are very proud as to what we did as a club.”

Yovel Zoosman wrapped up the game and looked ahead to the semifinals, “We moved on and now we can look ahead to the next series. It’s a bit strange that we are playing a best-of-3 and not a best-of-five as we did in the quarterfinals which really would be incredible for the game of basketball but in any case we are going to do what we have to do in this series against a team that has also a lot of expectations.”

Adam Ariel spoke about the season that was, “We are very content as to how the season went and we were also in Europe, we had to deal with injuries and we lost players along the way. A basketball season isn’t something simple and we were able to be in the position to win every game we played. We wanted the season to end a bit differently but we will go into the summer with our heads high.”

Yovel Zoosman drained a 3-pointer while Jared Harper scored inside for Hapoel Jerusalem to get the game underway, Keyshawn Feazell responded for Maccabi Ramat Gan, Chris Johnson went from deep, Kendale McCullum put in a pair of layups, Drew Crawford and Or Cornelius traded triples, while Yahel Melamed’s last second tip in closed the gap to 19-18 in favor of the reds after ten minutes of play.

Amin Stevens scored for the visitors while Jared Harper put in points for the hosts to begin the second quarter, Adam Ariel went from deep, Jeremy Morgan countered with a deuce, Zoosman dialled up from long distance, Nimrod Levi scored a pair of baskets, Stevens and Harper traded baskets as Hapoel bumped their lead up to 41-34 at halftime.

Morgan went from deep and Harper scored as well to get the third quarter rolling, Zoosman drilled home another 3-pointer, Levi went from deep as well while Khadeen Carrington also scored as did Justin Smith, while Stevens tried to keep his team relevant but Yonatan Alon’s team went up 62-45 after thirty minutes of action.

Carrington went from downtown while Morgan added a pair as well from beyond the arc as Smith put in a couple of buckets to polish off the game.