Maccabi Ramat Gan clipped Hapoel Jerusalem 87-86 as Roi Huber hit the decisive 3-pointer late in the final frame to give Shmulik Brenner’s team ahead for good as they took the tight victory on the road. In a radius home game for the Reds, Justin Smith, Jared Harper and Khadeen Carrington scored for Hapoel Jerusalem while Roberto Gallinat, Amin Stevens and Adam Ariel countered for Maccabi Ramat Gan as they took a slim 49-48 lead in halftime.

Harper and Jeremy Morgan pushed the reds into the lead as Roi Huber tried to keep Shmulik Brenner’s team close but Yonatan Alon’s squad took a 74-66 lead into the final frame. Ariel and Stevens along with Huber cut into the lead, Gaby Chachashvili and Carrington kept Hapoel in front but a huge corner 3-ball from Huber to put the visitors ahead with 2:10 to go along with free throws from Kendale McCullum wrapped up the win.

Huber scored 21 points, Gallinat put in 17 points and Stevens scored 16 points in the win. Carrington scored 21 points, Smith added 18 points and Harper scored 15 points in the loss.

“This was a fabulous victory due to the way we ended up winning the game,” Brenner said. “The third quarter was perhaps our weakest one of the season and we had to focus on ourselves not have poor body language and we shouldn’t have argued with the refs. But we gave ourselves a chance to win the game in the last quarter and we did it.”

“We made some poor decision perhaps due to exhaustion and they played very well,” Alon said. It’s tough not to play at home, but we had a good crowd here and the atmosphere was fine. Ramat Gan is a good team. We weren’t consistent enough whether it was the rebounds or on the defensive side.”

Roi Huber, who scored the game breaker 3-pointer looked back at the victory, “This was a big win against a great team. We had a period of time where we were having trouble in the third quarter, but we were able to overcome that to record what was really terrific win. We came in prepared and while they had a run in the third quarter we were able to comeback and win the game.”

Jared Harper who has been key to Jerusalem’s success this season has also had to carry the team for quite some time due to injuries spoke about the exhaustion factor, “You can say that but I didn’t want to use that as an excuse. It’s too bad that we did not have this game at home. We started out slow and it wasn’t our best game defensively. We got a lead double digit and you can’t lose that in the fourth quarter, we knew that they would fight all the way and they deserve credit.”