A win is what Jerusalem would have liked to have accomplished but they were far, far from it after falling to Hapoel Tel Aviv 87-71 in the State Cup quarterfinal. The capital city Reds entered the knockout game with the thought of making up for being eliminated from the Champions League in a best of 3 series against Prometey, but it was perhaps never much more than a thought.

There is no question that there are issues within the team which captain Adam Ariel alluded to as did Yotam Halperin and those issues are definitely a lot more serious than what the team may have been letting on. However, when the captain Adam Ariel says that the team had a bad week plus of practice, the red flags started flying all over the place at the post game press conference.

“We didn’t have a good couple of weeks at practice and we have to pick it up and play hard for the fans,” a discouraged Ariel said. “This wasn’t a good game and we lost it with our lack of intensity and our body language. We didn’t want to lose here but we will continue to work hard and we still have the league to play for.”

“After being eliminated from Europe there were issue and the players were upset and that influenced the preparation for this game. But we will change our attitude and not give up.”

Halperin, who has been exposed over the past few weeks as he experiences some tough times in his first go as a head coach didn’t hide the fact that the team has been going through a rough time of late while also acknowledging that there has been perhaps a little too much responsibility thrust upon Retin Obasohan.

“We are in somewhat of a slump right now and I don’t want to talk about what is going on with the team as that is between us, but it’s how we came into the game. There’s no question that we missed Sean Kilpatrick and having to put a lot on Retin has hurt us. We are still trying to get Noam (Dovrat) into the swing of things and while I’m very happy with the players we have and we are always looking to improve. But you’ll never hear me say that a player was tired.”

Halperin may not say the players were tired but one doesn’t need a masters degree to see that Jerusalem is tired and not the same team they had been just a short month ago. It’s as if the band aid that the team was able to put on the horrific start of the season under Oren Amiel with Halperin coming in as coach has now come off and the wound has reopened in a very bad way.

Guy Harel, Eyal Homsky and the rest of the professional staff have to take a good long hard look into the mirror and understand from the mistakes that they made this past summer, the summer before and the summer before that. There was once a direction for this club and as much as they want to say that there is, there really isn’t. Jerusalem may be in first place in league play but it’s really smoke and mirrors, nothing more and nothing less.

“We still have a long league ahead of us and we didn’t play well enough in the State Cup quarterfinal,” Halperin said.

The real test that they will now face is to try and see how well they can do in league play. A few weeks ago the team spoke about how they were still in Europe, the Cup and the league. Last week they spoke about how they were still in the Cup and the league. Now they are talking about how they are still in the league.

Jerusalem has got to get off of the mat and quickly or else they will begin to free fall down the standings as their first post-Cup test takes place on Thursday at Hapoel Eilat who will most certainly be chomping at the bit.