Nes Ziona downed Kiryat Ata 97-82 as Bryce Brown, Ryan Turell and Darnell Edge broke the game open in a 33-17 third quarter to notch the win. The visitors came out strong to begin the game as Chavaughn Lewis and Silvio De Sousa dominated the play but an upbeat Turell along with Brown and Edge evened the game up by halftime and continued with their hot shooting and momentum into the second half as Yair Kravits joined the party to pick up their second win of the season.

Brown scored 23 points, Edge added 17 points and Turell scored 16 points in the win. De Sousa and Lewis each scored 15 points in the loss.

“You can see we had a very tough time in the first quarter and they took so many shots,” Nes Ziona head coach Amit Sherf sqid. “We focused on taking offensive rebounds during the week and we saw on video what we needed to do against a team that takes a lot of chances and traps. Our center Ricky Lindo had a bunch of fouls early but our guys took advantage of the smaller lineups going forward to win the game.”

“To come here at 12:30 on Friday is a challenge but we did a good job in the first quarter,”Kiryat Ata head coach Eldad Bentov began. “However, things things didn’t work out from there as we had a tough second quarter and it continued into the third quarter. We knew tyat thsi was going to be a tough road game.”

The game MVP Ryan Turell spoke about the win, “Kiryat Ata came out and brought the energy and punched us in the mouth. But we brought more energy from the second quarter and we played tough as we tied them up by the end of the half. From there we raise our level of defense and got the stop. Hopefully we can bring this into the next games.”

Yariv Amiram also spoke about the game from his point of view, “We prepared well for this game as we knew it not going to be an easy game. We came out well but then things went the wrong way. We have two weeks to get back on track.”

Silvio De Sousa got busy inside for Kiryat Ata to get the game underway while Darnell Edge countered for Nes Ziona, however, Chavaughn Lewis along with points from deep by JJ Kaplan and Yariv Amiram gave the visitors a 25-13 lead after ten minutes of play.

Ryan Turell knocked down a corner 3-ball to begin the second quarter, De Sousa and Itay Segev traded baskets in the paint, Lewis went for a pair from deep, Jake Van Tubbergen and Darnell Edge put in points while Bryce Brown added a 3-point play to knot the game up at 44-44 at halftime.

Turell led off the third quarter from deep yet again, added a deuce and hit another corner 3-ball, Van Tubbergen and Edge scored while Yuval Sznaideman answered at the other end, but buckets from Edge, a triple by Tzuf Ben Moshe and yet more points from Brown gave Amit Sherf’s team a 77-61 lead after thirty minutes of action.

Turell drained another comer triple to get the final frame underway, Chris Smith came back with points from the outside and inside while JJ Kaplan also scored but Ricky Lindo with a layup and dunk plus points a plenty from Kravits and a dunk by Turell wrapped up the victory.

Gilboa Galil defeated Hapoel Haifa 100-81. Ish El Amin led Gilboa with 34 points, Gur Lavy and Lotan Amsalem helped with 17. Young had 17 points to lead the scorers on Hapoel Haifa.