Rishon Le’Zion needed a win. They badly needed a victory of they wanted to remain relevant as the Israel Basketball league headed into the third round of games.

Dror Cohen’s team, which is teetering on relegation chalked up their 5th win of the season with a 78-73 conquest of Hapoel Jerusalem. The wine city side will now enter the final stage of the season with five games to go and two games behind Hapoel Beer Sheva who are just above the red line as both teams will look to avoid a trip dwon to the Leumit League, Israel’s second division.

There is no question that Rishon has talent and players that are consummate professionals. If they didn’t, they would have never been able to compete with Jerusalem, never alone defeat them at home and keep their ever so slim chances of staying up in the top league.

Whether it’s Archie Goodwin who is an absolute bucket, Diamon Simpson the old time work horse and leader of the squad, Anthony Brown who spent time in the NBA with the Los Angeles Lakers or Tu Holloway who has seen one or two things in his career, Cohen has a solid core of players that should be able to play with any other team in the league.

Why they haven’t been able to is a whole other story, but now it’s all about survival and those are the instincts that will rise to the forefront as they ready to battle Hapoel Tel Aviv, Nes Ziona, Gilboa Galil and others to find a way to spend the 2022/23 campaign where they feel that they belong.

We missed the feeling of winning, the credit goes to the players,” a relieved Cohen said following the victory over the Reds which dropped Yotam Halperin’s team in second place ahead of round three. The players themselves decided that they wanted to battle and we wanted this game a lot. We wanted to show that we will attack and focus on the pick and roll and stop them, but they also had a tough game.”

Cohen also went on to praise Diamon Simpson who scored 12 points and grabbed 13 rebounds but went 0/7 from the charity stripe, “Diamon played with his heart and he is a leader. He came here to lead. When his hands were gone he played with his heart.”

Simpson who was definitely at the center of the fight had a smile from ear to ear after the matchup knowing full well that this was a much needed win, “We’ve been down so long so it feels good winning. It’s hard on us and the coach. We’ve been fighting for our lives for 5 months. We are fighting every day.”

Of course it wasn’t just Simpson that played a key role but a youngster who began the season with Hapoel Jerusalem and had barely played any minutes ahead of this game. 19-year old Yuval Sznaiderman found out earlier in the day that guard Guy Palatin who had been sick for part of the week would be out for the matchup and that the Himelfarb High School product would get minutes the team he grew up rooting for.

What Szaiderman did was grab that opportunity with both hands and show that he can be a solid contributor on a top flight club as he scored 6 points, all of them from the line with some coming as time ticked down and with the pressure squarely on his shoulders. But the youngster made each and every one of them cleanly which helped Rishon to the hard earned win.

“I didn’t know him beforehand,” Cohen said of Sznaiderman. “I spoke to the Jerusalem coaches about him before he came over to us including Oded Katesh, Ofer Ron and others as well. He came into this game like a man and with a couple of missing players he took his chance with two hands and he made good decisions, hit his shots and really helped us today.”

“Every day Yuval goes hard,” Simpson said. “He’s really good. I’m happy he had a chance to play and I wish nothing but success for him. He hit the free throws at the end which were clutch.”

Over on the Red side, interim head coach Yotam Halperin wasn’t interested in even discussing what one of his former players was able to do against his team that sent them to the disappointing loss.

“Yuval is a good player and I wish him the best, but right now I’m looking at how I can get to the top as best as we can.”

Retin Obasohan, who spent half a season with Sznaiderman also reflected on the Jerusalem property’s performance, “I’m happy for Yuval. He was a guy who was with us, so he is part of the brotherhood. I pray he gets better and that he stays healthy because he is talented.”

Obasohan who conferred with veteran guard EJ Rowland throughout the game, had a brutal all-around performance with only 9 points while also fouling out in a showing that he would like to quickly forget.

“It’s on me,” a banged up Oba began. “I’ve put myself in situation where I take pride with the way I play. But I will have to watch film to see how to get better. I truly believe we can be tremendously successful with the variety of guys contributing in different ways. It could have been that way today. We fell short. Anything we want to achieve is still possible.”

Halperin also spoke about his guard’s tough night at the office, “Rishon defended him well and it was tough for him to create. Everyone had that issue and Rishon deserves credit for the win today. I hope that this will be something for us that will make us better down the road. We are all human beings and I knew that there would be a drop in intensity after the Holon game, but everyone had to take a step up on the mental side of the game.”

With Jerusalem now in second place, the game against Maccabi Tel Aviv will be at Yad Eliyahu instead of the Arena which means a significant loss of revenue for the Reds from one of country’s marquee matchups. But putting finances aside, Halperin’s team will need to step it up regardless heading into the stretch run and he is well aware of that.

“We always want to be in first place and that is part of the DNA of the club, but now we have five tough games and we want to play well in these contests going forward. I hope we will learn from this.”