Israel fell to Slovenia 79-55 in quarterfinal action at the FIBA Under-19 World Cup as the blue-and-white will now turn their sights on finishing as high as possible in the classification bracket beginning on Saturday.

Head Coach Sharon Avrahami’s squad came out in good spirits after having beaten Cameroon in the Round of 16 as Rany Belaga and Omer Mayer scored for Israel while Lovro Lapajne, Urban Kroflic and Aljaz Menic found points for Slovenia to take a slim 15-14 lead after ten minutes of play. Oren Sahar and Mayer scored to go ahead but Mark Padjen, Kroflic and Max Smrekar scored from the inside and outside to help Slovenia to a 15-3 run and grab a 38-28 lead at halftime.

Vit Hrabar and Smrekar continued to score for Slovenia as did Aljaz Menic to bump up their lead to 60-42 after thirty minutes of action. Sahar tried to keep Israel in the game Smrekar and Filip Petkovski kept filing the basket to eliminate the blue-and-white from medal contention.

Sahar scored 20 points and Mayer added 9 points in the loss while Smrekar scored 22 points, Kroflic put in 13 points and Hrabar scored 11 points in the win.

“I think that they really defended well and they stopped us from creating,” Avrahami said. “We couldn’t move the ball, our 3% was not good and what really hurt us was the turnovers that led to easy baskets. We did the best we could and to beat a team like Slovenia you have to play the perfect game and this wasn’t the case today. It’s not a simple tournament to compete in and now we will make adjustments for our upcoming games.”

Amos Frishman, the Chairman of the Israel Basketball Association said, “The Israel Under-19 National Team thrilled an entire country with its journey at the World Championship. I’m proud as to how the team played, especially after their preparation was halted due to Operation ‘Am Kalavi’ and there was difficulties in sending the team abroad. Once again, we saw proof that there is a bright future for basketball and for the Israeli basketball player. I want to congratulate the entire team, players and staff on the historic achievement at the World Championship.”

Omer Mayer also discussed the matchup, “I felt good coming into the game and played the way I know how, however, it’s didn’t go as well as I would have liked it to today. I don’t have much to say, but we wanted to bring pride to the country and we played with pride and leave everything on the court, but we didn’t look good. I tried not to focus myself and I just wanted to play my game but I knew that they would really try and mess up our pick and roll game and they made it difficult. We will prepare well for Saturday’s game and come out with the win.”

Oren Sahar spoke about the game that was, “It’s disappointing and we gave them some easy baskets out there so were upset about the result. We weren’t surprised by Slovenia and we have faced them before so we knew what we would be up against. Although we’re disappointed we have a couple of important game coming up to finish as well as possible in the competition.”