There was a point in time that Kiryat Ata was in control of the game with an 11-2 lead which forced Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Oded Katash to call an early timeout. However, from that point on the court was tilted only one way as the yellow-and-blue chalked up a 94-68 win.

Maccabi Tel Aviv had their shooting sneakers on as they launched no less than 30 3-pointers while hitting 16 of them while also dominating the boards as they pulled down 44 rebounds to Kiryat Ata’s 28 in an all around one sided Sukkot victory.

Dibartolomeo led the way with six triples good for 18 points in an MVP performance, Wade Baldwin added 14 points while Josh Nebo, Iftach Ziv and Roman Sorkin all scored 10 points in the win. Chavaughn Lewis scored 13 points while Karam Mashour added 12 points in the loss.

“After a few minutes we figured out how they were defending us and we made our adjustments,” Maccabi coach Oded Katash began. “We had some better minuets and we did well from 3-posters as that is what they gave us. We were able to play some of the guys like Brown, Baldwin, Colson and we saw some good things.”

“I thought we stayed the game well but when Maccabi started grabbing the rebounds and ran they just took off from there,” Kiryat Ata coach Sharon Avrahami said. “Maccabi isn’t in our league and we have to understand that. Of course we want to win, but we have to know that there are difference in the level of play and they have 12 players in their rotation. We know that we have to win the games that we need to which are the majority of games going forward.”

Game MVP John Dibartolomeo looked back at the contest, “One of the goals was to keep Kiryat ATA’s scoring low in order to make our job easier and I’m hooky that we were able to do that. We played our game and kept the, under 70 points which helped us a lot. My teammates helped me with my good scoring game but we still have to improve.”

Josh Nebo also spoke about the game from his point of view, “Overall it was a good game and a good effort. The focus wasn’t there for the first few minutes and then we adjusted and went from there. It’s a process and we are a brand new team. We are trying to go get to know each other and we are all committed to that. While we aren’t there with our chemistry just yet we are going in the right direction.”

Kiryat Ata ran off an 11-2 run to begin the game as Chavaughn Lewis, Karam Mashour, Juvonte Reddic and Amin Stephens all scored to set Maccabi Tel Aviv back by 9 points midway through the first quarter. John Dibartolomeo dialled up long distance for a pair of triples while Wade Baldwin and Lorenzo Brown each added one as well to give the yellow-and-blue a 21-15 Leaan after ten minutes of play.

Iftach Ziv and Guy Pnini went from deep and Brown added an easy deuce inside to bump the lead up to 36-22 with 5:20 left in the second quarter. Josh Nebo got into the act with a trio of nifty buckets inside which included a floater, layup and dunk and Baldwin added a pair of baskets to give Oded Katash’s team a 52-31 lead at halftime.

Lewis and Mashour scored for Kiryat Ata while Nebo and Rafi Menco did the same for Maccabi, Reddic scored a couple of baskets for Sharon Avrahami’s team but Dibartolomeo, Pnini and Baldwin each knocked down triples to end the quarter in cruise control 73-53 after thirty minutes of action.

Dibartolomeo went from deep and then fed Nebo for an alleyoop, Ziv dunked while Dibartolomeo kept hitting his shots from beyond the arc to finish off a 26-point Maccabi win.