Hapoel Tel Aviv were overwhelmed by Monaco 105-85 as the reds finished the Euroleague regular season in 6th place with a record of 23-15 as they now face Real Madrid in the best-of-5 quarterfinal series. Dimitrios Itoudis’s squad came out flat as Monaco went right after the visitors from the get go as Jaron Blossomgame and Mike James helped the hosts to a 58-41 lead at halftime and never looked back as they recorded the blowout win. Chris Jones scored 17 points, Dan Oturu added 14 points and Colin Malcolm put in 13 points in the loss while Blossomgame scored 30 points and James scored 30 points in the victory.

The reds will now ready for a quarterfinal series that will feature the first two games in Madrid on Wednesday April 29th and Friday May 1st while games three and if necessary game four will be played the following week in Sofia, Bulgaria with the winner punching their ticket to the Final Four in Athens later in the month.

“Congratulations to Monaco,” Hapoel Tel Aviv Head Coach Dimitrios Itoudis began. “They played better than us and deserved to win. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, how we started the game and how it continued until the third quarter, that wasn’t us. We have to accept that we didn’t show up, not even close to our potential or our standards. We’ll move on to the playoffs, that’s an achievement. We didn’t want to end the regular season like this, but it happens in basketball and now we’ll focus on what’s ahead.”