Maccabi Tel Aviv walloped Hapoel Galil Elyon 103-67 in a game that was never close as the yellow-and-blue took a 27-8 lead after the first quarter and never looked back to record the victory. Roman Sorkin led the way with 18 points, Jasiel Rivero added 16 points and Omer Mayer chipped in with 14 points while Chen Guy paced Galil with 15 points in the loss.

“The game ended before it began,” Galil Elyon head coach Barak Peleg said. “This wasn’t our spirit or our intensity and the energy that we wanted to bring to this game. Not to show up to play this game is very disappointing. If we are coming in to play we have to show some fight every time we put on this uniform but in this game it didn’t happen.”

“We are keeping up our winning streak and we began the game well and the game was decided by the end of the first quarter,” Maccabi coach Oded Katash said. “We have to give Galil a huge amount of credit that they have continued to compete every game due to the circumstances that they have faced all season long. As much as we have gone through they have been dealing with even more since October 7th.”

17-year old up and coming guard Omer Mayer looked back at the win and his season to date, “This was great. I’m at a club who have helped me so much behind the scenes and who have given me tools even if I’m not going to play. I still have plenty to improve and learn but in this game my shot just went down.”

In Israel State Cup play, Hapoel Beer Sheva stunned Hapoel Holon 88-83 to advance to the final four of the competition as JaKeenan Gant scored 23 points in the victoy. In addition to Gant, Grant Shefield scored 16 in the win, while Kevin Hervey added 23 points and Justin Smith scored 16 points in the loss.

“It’s never easy to come to this incredible arena,” Beer Sheva head coach Oren Aharoni said. “We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare foe this game as we had just played a few days ago. The guys deserve credit as we were in this all the way from the beginning of the game and we were focused defensively.”

Egor Koulechov spoke about the win, “Since Oren Aharoni arrived we have been going through a process and he has changed the team. As someone who has been with the team from the beginning of the season, I can said that we had many tough games and we lost due to the small details. I believe that these tough times are behind us.”