Maccabi Tel Aviv takes on Zalgiris Thursday (21:05) as they will look to get back onto the winning track after having fallen in Israeli league action to Hapoel Jerusalem along with having lost five Euroleague games in a row with their last victory coming at the end of November against ALBA Berlin.

Head Coach Oded Katash’s squad has gone through all kinds of issues this season from injuries, new players coming in and other going out as the bench boss has had to deal with a tremendous amount of challenges that he did not have to handle in previous campaigns. The Head of the Basketball Committee at Maccabi Tel Aviv David Blatt spoke this week about how the club has been handling one of the toughest season’s that the yellow-and-blue had experienced to try and fan the flames of the disappointed fans and faithful.

However, with a 4-13 record thus far in continental competition the damage has been done as Maccabi will now have to try to find a way to continue building its squad for next year’s Euroleague campaign which will hopefully see games return back to Israel after having been on the road since October 2023 and the outbreak of the war with Hamas.

The yellow-and-blue have seen yet more changes in their roster just this past week with big man Trevion Williams coming in from ALBA and Wenyen Gabriel heading out to Panathinaikos in what was no doubt a financial move for the club that has been struggling.

Just before Katash and his squad left for Belgrade for yet another “home away from home” game he addressed what seems to be the never ending issues that his club has continued to face.

“We are not in a good state, not in an ideal state, but this is how we have to get to these games. All sorts of things have happened, all sorts of things have changed. We need to grow and be happy and from there we will know how to do things better.”

Veteran Israeli Jake Cohen who almost was not a part of this team after his contract had not been renewed immediately after last season, also spoke about what the team has been experiencing this season, “We are in the middle of a process and are trying to improve. I think the results haven’t been good, but we know what we need to work on and believe in ourselves. Oded will get us there and the squad is capable, we know what we need to do to reach the highest levels possible. We were very close in a few games.”

Guard Rokas Jokubautis who has had his ups and downs himself this season as he continues his transition from a role player to much more than that added, “The first round of the Euroleague was really bad, obviously we don’t want to be where we are now. Things didn’t go our way in a lot of games so we’re starting the second round of the Euroleague and we need to change our mentality a little bit, of course, we’ve made a lot of changes during the season and I think the most in terms of Euroleague teams, so it’s also a difficult situation to be in. The second round is starting and we need to forget how the first was and start with a win to finally get a good feeling because that’s what we need the most.”

In order to try and take a step forward, Maccabi brought in Trevion Williams who was signed to a 1.5 year contract through the end of the 25/26 season. The Purdue product went on to play in the G-League for a season then landed in Ulm last year where he put in a superb performance with 14.2 points and 9.4 rebounds which helped him land in the Euroleague this year when he signed with ALBA. In Berlin, the Chicago native scored 11 points and grabbed 7 boards in 26 games as his new bench boss in Oded Katash hopes that his latest recruit will continue on his upward trend.

“It’s difficult to know how much he will be able to contribute, he did not have time to do too much. Relative to what we tried, it went quite quickly, all sorts of defensive schemes and things like that. We will have to continue to get him up to speed on the move.”

Katash also reflected on Gabriel’s departure, “We really liked him. I enjoyed coaching him, even though he was injured twice. That’s true. Professionally, I wanted to keep him, it would have been better to just add Williams, but there are all sorts of components to the decision and it was decided to release him, mainly for financial reasons so that we can continue to strengthen the team.”

Maccabi is still not finished making adjustments to the squad as both Blatt and Katash have mentioned this week as the club is still looking to add a guard, “I hope we are very close. We definitely need someone who is very dominant, of high quality, also in terms of scoring points and in playing defense.”

As for Andrea Trinchieri’s Zalgiris, they sit in 8th place with a 10-7 record and have a number of fantastic talents, most notably Lonnie Walker who came over the from NBA. But it’s not just Walker, it’s also a tight defense that can really cause teams problems which is something that former Zalgiris guard Jokubatis knows all about.

“Their defense is one of the best in the Euroleague, they have really great lineups and now they also have Lonnie Walker and Sylvain Francisco. They have talent on offense as well and that’s what makes them so good. We know what we have to do against them, it’s going to be tough to play against them. Nobody likes to play against Zalgiris so it’s going to be a tough challenge.”

“Žalgiris doesn’t score much,” Katash added. “But that’s because of their pace and they also have two dominant scorers. When one has the ball, we will have to guard them both, which we did not do well enough in the game against Jerusalem [who had two main ball handlers]. We need to do this better. When playing against Lithuanian teams, we need to close out and go for the rebounds.”

Jokubaitis understands that this has been a crazy season in terms of travel with home games on the road plus Israeli league games coming fast and furious together with Euroleague double weeks. With that he does have one wish and hope going into the Holiday season.

“The thing I wish for the most is that the Euroleague home games be brought back to Tel Aviv because that’s what we need the most, the players, the team and the fans. Of course, there will also be great times with the families, that’s the most important thing and to wish everyone a better second half of the season because I think it would be impossible for it to be worse than the first.”