Maccabi Tel Aviv fell to Baskonia 101-98 in what was a serious blow to the yellow-and-blue’s Euroleague Play In aspirations. The loss dropped Oded Katash’s squad’s record to 18-17 as they also moved down to 12th place behind Dubai (19-17) who are in 11th spot while Monaco sit in the final Play in place with a 19-16 record.

The yellow-and-blue jumped out to a 53-44 advantage at halftime with fine shooting from the outside via Lonnie Walker and Jimmy Clark along with inside scoring from Roman Sorkin. However, Baskonia came back with a 40-19 third quarter as Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot and Trent Forrest spurred the on the host’s scoring to take the lead and go on to the win. Clark scored 26 points, Walker added 23 points and Sorkin put in 22 points in the loss while Luwawu-Cabarrot scored 21 points and Forrest scored 19 points in the win. Next up for Maccabi is Paris in France on Thursday night (22:00 Israel time).

“Sometimes you lose games on bad attitude, bad body language,” Maccabi Head Coach Oded Katash said. “We were not together, we didn’t play the right way. It’s more than basketball, but it’s not us. Very tough, a bad loss for us.”

“We had an amazing third quarter, a very good fourth quarter,” Baskonia Head Coach Paolo Galbiati commented. “We got a little bit stuck with matchups on defense, because we were scared to win the game, but great second half. I’m happy for the players.”

The game MVP Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot spoke about the victory, “It’s our last home game, we have nothing really to play for, but we have a winning streak going, with two more games, we want to keep it going. We talked at halftime about defense. They scored way too many points, so we locked in. We came into the third quarter and scored 40, we ran, we made great shots.”

Maccabi forward Will Rayman looked ahead to the club’s next few games, “We need to focus on the next three games. We have the tiebreaker over teams that are close to us, so if we win the three remaining games, we have a chance. This loss hurts a lot, especially because in the third quarter it didn’t feel like we wanted the game more than they did, and that’s something we’ll have to change for Thursday’s game. Paris is a very good team, and if we play the way we did in the third quarter, we’ll lose by 30. We need to come out, play hard, and play as if we truly want to win the next three games.”