Hapoel Tel Aviv cruised past Hapoel Gilboa Galil 86-72 as 5 players scored in double digits to sweep their quarterfinal series 3-0 and advance to the semifinals where they will play the winner of the Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Ramat Gan series.

Ish El-Amin and Gur Lavy scored for Hapoel Gilboa Galil while Bar Timor and Antonio Blakeney countered for Hapoel Tel Aviv early on while Marcus Foster wiped out the visitors lead to go up 43-32 at halftime. Niv Misgav, Josh Price and Paul Scruggs tried to cut down the lead but Johnathan Motley, Oz Blayzer and Blakeney scored with ease to close out the game.

“We were the better team,” Hapoel Tel Aviv Dimitrios Itoudis began. “Game by game and practice by practice we became a better team. They gave us a good battle. We had a very successful year in the EuroCup and we finished first in the regular season and we keep competing. We were short handed with some injuries but I like that we still fight.”

“We wanted to win at least one game so that’s disappointing,” Hapoel Gilboa Galil Head Coach Sharon Avrahami said. “But we have a lot of pride as to how we competed in this series. We had trouble at the start of the season and it was disappointing but in the second half we made some adjustments and we started to play defense really well. Perhaps with Ben Moore we could have won one game here.”

Antonio Blakeney spoke about the win, “We had slow first quarters in each of the games but we showed that we can battle through them. I’ll try to do everything in my power to help us win.”