Maccabi Tel Aviv just got by Maccabi Ramat Gan 84-81 in what was a very tight game that could have gone either way at Yad Eliyahu. Shmulik Brenner’s team controlled the pace of play from the get go as Jordan Floyd and Ronaldo Segu helped Ramat Gan to a 58-51 lead at halftime. But Roman Sorkin, John Dibartolomeo and Jimmy Clark led a late game comeback to help Oded Katash’s team to the razor thin win.

Sorkin scored 17 points and Lonnie Walker added 15 points for Maccabi while Floyd scored 20 points and Segu put in 19 points in the loss.

“I’m not sure we would have won this game without this crowd,” Katash said following the game. “We talked at halftime and I told the players that teams come here and feel like they have nothing to lose. The numbers speak for themselves, that’s the difference. The first quarter was outrageous for us defensively. They gained confidence and in the second quarter they made shots that boosted their confidence even more. But I liked the players’ response.”

Shmulik Brenner was disappointed with the loss but praised his players, “We’ll take the fact that we were better than Maccabi for 35 minutes. It’s very disappointing, but there were a lot of good things, we’ll learn from it and move forward. What hurt us was their aggressiveness, which we didn’t respond to well enough. It came down to one play here or there, but we shouldn’t have let it get to that.”

Roman Sorkin also shared his thoughts about the victory, “An important win for us, you can’t underestimate any team or situation. In the first half, we didn’t really show up energy-wise. We need to start games better. We did a good job in the second half. We just need to be more consistent and play hard from the start. All the excuses about being a new team are true, but we need to step it up.”

Hapoel Galil Elyon defeated Elitzur Netanya 85-78 thanks to a strong third quarter where they held the hosts to just 12 points to snatch the win. Cyril Langevine scored 21 points and Yuval Sznaiderman added 15 points in his debut for Galil as Raz Adam (8p) also made his return to the court after a long time on the shelf with an injury. Otis Frazier paced Netanya with 28 points.