Slovenia defeated Israel 75-62 in one of the Blue & White’s poorest performance in quite some time as nothing seemed to work for Guy Goodes and his squad. Israel took a slim 18-15 lead after the first quarter but from that point on it was all the visitors as Edo Muric, Micha Lapornik and Jordan Morgan did as they pleased with the hosts featuring just Tomer Ginat in double digits as Israel’s World Cup dreams continued to slip away. Next up for Goodes’s squad is a road game in Sweden on Monday night.

“We gave up 24 turnovers,” Goodes said following the game. “The ball didn’t move and we didn’t make good decisions, but this is the fact when you play windows and many players never played with each other before. We cut the game down to 4 points but we lost a ball here and there and we just weren’t focussed enough. The Slovenians were better than us the entire game. We will go out to Sweden and get ready to play.”

“This was good win against an excellent team,” Slovenia coach Aleksander Sekulic said. “Big congrats to our team and they fought hard for this win. Every player who stepped on the court played tough and that is what you have to do when you wear this jersey.”

Bar Timor looked back at the loss, “We were missing a lot, offensive rebounds and aggressiveness. They won deservingly and they were better than us in this game. I don’t think it wasn’t that we didn’t want it enough we just missed a lot of things in this game. We had a lack of focus with 24 turnovers.”

Ziga Samar spoke about the win, “We know that it would be a tough game and we spoke about the need to play defense with a lot of energy and with that we took the win.”

Ginat led Israel with 12 points and Timor added 9 points in the loss, while Muric and Laponik each scored 16 points in the win.

Rafi Menco opened the game for Israel with points in the paint, Bar Timor got the ball to Tomer Ginat for an easy layup but Ziga Samar and Jordan Morgan scored a pair of easy buckets for Slovenia while Idan Zalmanson and Samar traded buckets as Israel took a slim 8-6 lead midway through the first quarter. Morgan put down a monster dunk off a pick and roll, Ginat hit a triple, Nimrod Levi put in a Gaby Chachashvili miss, Bine Prepelic scored off the break, Noam Dovrat went for a corner 3 and Netanel Artzi scored inside as the blue-and-white took an 18-15 leas after ten minutes of play.

Micha Lapornik went from deep, while Samar and Morgan each scored for the visitors, Niv Misgav found points for Guy Goodes’s team, but Slovenia went ahead 29-22 with 5:37 left in the second quarter. Lapornik went from downtown, Ginat and Timor scored while the latter added an acrobatic layup as both teams hit a number of free throws to send the visitors into halftime up 38-34.

Levi began the third quarter with a 3-pointer, Edo Muric went from the inside and the outside for 8 straight points and Samar scored to give Slovenia a 51-39 lead midway through the frame. Gaby Chachashvili put down a big dunk, Levi found points while Ginat free throws and a triple to end the period cuts the gap to 56-51.

Morgan got the fourth quarter started off with a layup, Dovrat came right back with a layup through the paint and a triple, Urban Klavzar responded, Artzi went from deep and Muric answered as Slovenia kept the lead 66-59 with 5:40 remaining in regulation time. Morgan put in a layup and a variety of players hit their free throws to hand Slovenia the dominating win.