Hapoel Holon escaped with an 84-81 overtime win at Legia Warsaw as Joe Ragland came up big in the clutch to help the purples get their Basketball Champions League campaign off on the right foot. Erick Green and Chris Johnson paced Guy Goodes’s squad over the course of the first half, but Ray McCallum’s triple knotted the score up at 68-68 to send the game into the extra session. But Marvin Jones, Johnson and Ragland who nailed a deep 3-pointer with 21 seconds left notched the victory for the Israeli team.

“To comeback in a crucial situation behind by ten we found a way to comeback by moving to a lineup with two bigs because we couldn’t make baskets from the outside,” Holon head coach Guy Goodes said. “We started the game well but they cane back and we turned over the ball. We did a better job in they second half and only gave up two points on turnovers. To get the win we are still adjusting is good.”

“A win is a win especially on the road to start off the season. Hats off to us as we came back to win. We have a few things to clean up and in the first half we turned over the ball but had less in the second half,” Chris Johnson said.

Green led the way with 19 points while going 4/6 from beyond the arc, Johnson added a double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds while Ragland scored 10 points, dished out 13 assists and grabbed 7 boards in the win.

Bnei Herzliya had a reality check in their first Champions League game falling 86-70 at Peristeri. Maurice Kemp led the way with 24 points and 11 rebounds, Andy Van Vliet added 12 points while Quinton Hooker and Chris Babb scored 10 points each in the defeat. Miro Bilan with 17 points and Sylvain Francisco with 16 points paced the hosts in the win.

“They deserved the win and were much more aggressive than us as we committed 20 turnovers,” Bnei Herzliya coach Oren Aharoni. “We had a bad shooting night and the open shots didn’t fall in but the aggressiveness is what won the game for Peristeri.”

Maurice Kemp also reflected on the loss, “They definitely deserved the win and we didn’t match their intensity at all and didn’t take care of the ball. They forced us into a lot of turnovers and we had a poor shooting night but we were more disappointed in our rebounding and defense in the first half.”