Hapoel Holon dropped the back end of their home and home series with Galatasaray 74-71 in Basketball Champions League Round of 16 Group Stage action. Earlier in the week, Goodes’s squad defeated their Turkish foes 98-89 and hold the head to head tie-breaker with a better point differential which could play a factor in advancing to the Top 8. The loss moves the purples record to 2-2 after four games, good for second place in Group I with two games remaining at home against Dijon who sit in first place with an identical 2-2 mark and a road tilt in Germany at Ludwigsburg.

The Turkish hosts raced out to a quick 29-16 lead after ten minutes as former Israeli league standout Kerry Blackshear scored at will and put Guy Goodes’s crew in a deep hole. However, Adam Smith, Rafi Menco and Michale Kyser began chipping away at the advantage to take the lead 65-64 with five minutes left in the game. But Melo Trimble, Devaughn Akoon-Purcell and Blackshear all scored in crunch time to take the victory.

Kyser led the way for Holon with 16 points, Menco added 15 points and Smith scored 14 points in the loss. Blackshear paced Galatasaray with 24 points, Akoon-Purcell dropped 17 points and Dee Bost chipped in with 14 points in the win.

Holon’s head coach Guy Goodes “We started very slow in the first quarter and let Galatasaray play their style of game, running and shooting 3-pointers. We couldn’t stop it and took a timeout out to reset. I’m really happy with the adding half which we won 42-34 and we played extremely well in the 3rd quarter. It’s very tough to win when you turnover the ball 19 times. The only positive thing from the game is that we hold the better point difference.”

“We won but we are not happy,” Galatasaray coach Efren Memnun explained. “This has become a habit as every game we start aggressive and we get a double digit lead and we get softer and the other team gets tougher. We can’t run the plays and this happened in Israel and it is my job with the players to find solutions.”

“We dug a big hole at the beginning of the game,” Menco said. “We had to waste a lot of energy to come back. At the end we were there but we lost the game. I’m proud of my teammates as to how we fought to comeback.”