Maccabi Tel Aviv lost its opening game of the “Neofytos Chandriotis” preseason tournament in Nicosia on Saturday night, falling to Bayern Munich 95-107. While the game was close at halftime with Maccabi trailing by 3 points, a 31-20 third quarter for the Germans broke out the game to give them the win.

Rokas Jokubaitis (24 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists and 2 steals), Jordan Loyd (15 points, 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 steal), Wenyen Gabriel (13 points, 7 rebounds and 3 assists), Tamir Blatt (11 points, 1 rebound and 5 assists) and Roman Sorkin (10 points, 2 rebounds and 2 steals) led the scoring for Maccabi, while Carsen Edwards (27 points, 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 steal), Devin Booker (21 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 steal) and Shabazz Napier (14 points, 3 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 steals) were in double figures for the victors. Israeli Yam Madar has 3 assists and 2 steals in a little under 9 minutes for Bayern.

“Not such a good game for us,” Maccabi coach Oded Katash said after the game. “In the end it’s our second practice game, there are lots of things to improve. We weren’t very organized, they took us away from the things that we wanted to do a little bit. There’s lots of work, of course we don’t need to give away that many points. They shot crazy percentages [67.7% from 2 and 57.1% from 3).”

“There aren’t a lot of good things to take, we lost,” Jokubaitis summed up the game. “We struggled on defense. But it was only the second practice game. We need games like these to analyze video afterwards and to check what we didn’t do well, especially on defense.

Maccabi will play its final two practice games this week against, against Panathinaikos in their second game of the “Neofytos Chandriotis” preseason tournament on Monday night (19:30 IDT / 12:30 EDT) and then again against the defending EuroLeague and Greek champions in Athens on Friday (18:30 IDT / 11:30 EDT).

Hapoel Tel Aviv had a big victory in its last practice game of the preseason, defeating fellow EuroCup team Aris BC in Thessaloniki on Thursday night 100-72 on the back of a 35-14 first quarter.

Hapoel had six players in double digits in the game, including Braian Angola (20 points, 1 rebound and 2 steals), Bruno Caboclo in his club debut (16 points, 8 rebounds, 1 assist, 2 steals and 3 blocks), Marcus Foster (13 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists), Patrick Beverley (11 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 1 steal), Johnathan Motley (13 points, 6 rebounds and 1 assist) and Guy Palatin (11 points, 2 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals). David DeJulius (17 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists and 2 steals) and Eleftherios Mantzoukas (11 points, 2 rebounds, 2 steals and 2 block) led the scoring for Aris.

Hapoel will now look towards its opening EuroCup game against Joventut Badalona in Italy on Tuesday September 24.