Maccabi Tel Aviv cruised to a 94-67 win over Kiryat Ata to move into the Winner Cup semifinals where they will tip-off against Hapoel Holon on Saturday night for a trip to the finals.

The yellow-and-blue got off to a hot start with points from Roman Sorkin, Levi Randolph and Tamir Blatt but JJ Kaplan and Silvio De Sousa kept Kiryat Ata close after the opening frame. However, Jordan Loyd and Rokas Jokubaitis broke the game wide open as the second quarter came to a close as Maccabi went Jo by almost twenty points and never looked back over the course of the second half to wrap up the victory.

Jokubaitis scored 15 points, Blatt added 14 points, Sorkin scored 12 points and Loyd chipped in with 10 points in the win. De Sousa scored 17 points, Darryl Morsell scored 12 points and Kaplan put in 11 points in the loss.

“In the first quarter Kirayt Ata played very well and hit their shots while we turned over the ball,” Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Oded Katash said. But we settled down in the second quarter and we started playing well. I tried to take care of the players as best as possible and made sure those who are slightly injured didn’t play too much and that we split up the minutes. We built a new team this summer and we started last amongst the teams in Europe who began their preseason earlier than we did. We can see that but we will work on this over the next few weeks to come into the season in best possible shape.”

“We came into the game with quite a situation due to the missiles being fired up north and we have to come up with a solution for that. We were in the game for 15 minutes but we will have to find a way to continue to get better,” Kiryat Ata coach Eldad Bentov said. “As for coaching in the league, it’s an honor and it’s exciting but I have to look out for my players as we’ll need to learn how to be more aggressive over the course of the game.”

Rokas Jokubaitis spoke about the game from his point of view along with teh fans and hitting the half court shot just ahead of half-time, “It was nice to start with a win in the Winner Cup, I didn’t know what it was going to be like here. We originally thought that we would play in one place and then the game was moved to Holon so I didn’t expect this many fans to come out, but it was amazing how they support the team and very different than in Spain. You can hear them the entire game not like I Spain and that gave us energy to make runs and to be more motivated on the court. The shot was amazing! We shoot these shots at the shootaround before the game and at the end of practice so it was nice to see this one go in.”

JJ Kaplan looked back on the clash, “Tough team and we were with them for 15 minutes. Against teams like that you just can’t flinch. If we didn’t learn from this it will be a loss. It wasn’t an easy 24 hours for us and we tried our best to cal the guys down due to the situation and we tried to do the best job that we can to bring us together. We’ve only been a team for a month, so I expect that we will continue to improve.”

Roman Sorkin worked the inside, while Tamir Blatt and Levi Randolph scored from deep for Maccabi Tel Aviv as Kiryat Ata countered with a trio of triples by JJ Kaplan to get the game off and running, but Yariv Amiram’s deuce knotted the game up at 18-18 after ten minutes of play.

Rafi Menco began the second quarter with points from downtown, Raz Adam and Silvio De Sousa responded but a Jasiel Rivero dunk, a pair of Blatt triples to go with one from deep by Jordan Loyd, Rafi Menco and Rokas Jokubaitis along with another one from midcourt as the halftime buzzer sounded gave the yellow-and-blue a 51-32 advantage.

Blatt and Sorkin continued to put pressure on Kiryat Ata as they scored to open up the third quarter, Akia Pruitt and Liam O’Reilly nailed 3-pointers to try and stem the tide while De Sousa scored inside but Jake Cohen and Omer Mayer each drilled home corner 3-pointers, Loyd hit one as well to give Oded Katash’s squad a 77-55 lead after thirty minutes of action.

Sorkin and Jokubaitis were up to their old tricks to get the fourth quarter underway, Randolph put in a layup, Jokubaitis hit a 3-pointer and added a deuce to polish the game off and ease into the quarterfinals.