Hapoel Tel Aviv smashed Nes Ziona 116-63 as Dan Otoru proved to be unstoppable in the paint while Elijah Bryant and Yam Madar’s sharp shooting helped the reds who featured seven players in double digits to the victory.

Tomer Ginat fresh off his Israel National Team performance at the Eurobasket continued his fine play for Hapoel Tel Aviv while Desi Rodriguez countered for Nes Ziona, but points from Yam Madar and a pair of triples by Guy Palatin gave the reds a 28-21 lead after ten minutes of play. Elijah Bryant started to fill the basket while Dan Otoru and Bar Timor scored for the hosts as Andre Curbelo tried to keep the visitors close but Dimitrios Itoudis’s team headed into halftime with a 53-36 advantage.

Otoru started to score at will to begin the third quarter, Bryant found points as well to bump the score up to 81-50 after thirty minutes while the final frame was garbage time galore as Oz Blayzer and Sandy Cohen put the finishing touches on the win.

Otoru scored 16 points, Bryant added 15 points and Madar chipped in with 13 points in the victory while Rodriguez and Curbelo each scored 15 points in the loss.

Dimitrios Itoudis shared his thoughts about the game, “We’re very excited to have the majority of players with us and one of our goals is to build the right chemistry. We approached the game very seriously and the connection between players still needs some work and can only be explained with, work, work, work and work, we have to work more together.”

The Hapoel bench boss continued, “We have a deep roster as we analyzed our season and in order to realize our goals as we are in the Euroleague without a guaranteed contract is to how we can establish a 3-5 year contract. We are proud that we signed great Euroleague players and we can bring more to Hapoel Tel Aviv. Due to the location and we had to sign so many players. As for the length and depth of the roster, for my 30 years as a coach I tell the players what their role will be. Some we explained they will have a role in the Israeli league and some in both, it may happen that some players won’t be dressed but not that they did something wrong but the other guys are playing well.”

Itoudis also addressed the issue of having to come back to Israel for the Winner Cup which perhaps was not ideal for the club’s preparation, “We’re unhappy that the Israeli league didn’t implement changes we were promised to establish the same status quo as the other competitive leagues. We play against Barcelona to open the Euroleague which is a prestigious club and they made major changes but still have tons of experience.

“We could not have a different kind of a program because the league called us to come in the middle of the preseason to play in the Super Cup. We tried to make adjustments for the games in the Super Cup and unfortunately we can’t use all the players and have to follow the restrictions and extend it to 6 foreigners but we didn’t find an agreement. On the other have we play Rhodes in Sofia and hopefully another two games in the Super Cup and we will be ready to go for game one. I want everybody to understand that the different circumstances that we had to face in the Euroleague and made such decisions to have a deep roster.”

Amit Sherf spoke about the game from his points of view, “We had a short squad and at this point we knew that the guys could really only play 15-18 minutes. In general, I like to have Winner Cup games but perhaps they were a little early on in the process of preparing for the season. I don’t know if I would have wanted to play this game now but we will have more games coming up.”

Tomer Ginat also talked about returning to Hapoel Tel Aviv after competing with Israel at the Eurobasket, “I feel very good and very happy to start the new season. We only joined the team two days ago and we could see we have to work on communication as we just joined the team. We took the game seriously and it’s important to win games, which we did. It’s not easy to just come in and we came from a different, so we had to adjust and go to our safe places. Some guys played here last year but playing with new players after just two days of practice was not easy, but seeing the fans cheering for us makes it easier and it’s very important for us.”