Hapoel Jerusalem slammed Maccabi Ramat Gan 97-65 as Justin Smith soared above everyone with 27 points to take the win. Smith came out dunking, while Anthony Lamb along with almost the entire Hapoel Jerusalem squad scored in the first half to take a commanding 47-24 lead. Ronaldo Segu had the hot hand in the third quarter with 16 points to make a dent in the advantage but Smith kept filling the basket to help the Reds to the win. Along with Smith’s 27 points, Roi Huber scored 11 points and Lamb added 10 points in the win while Segu scored 20 points and Adam Ariel put in 15 points in the loss.

Jerusalem Head Coach Yonathan Alon shared his thoughts about the game, “There are things we wanted the guys to work on and I’m glad we did at least most of them reasonably well. It’s fun to have the national team players back. They’re also coming in in shape and understand the system so from that perspective it’s a good situation.”

Alon also talked about some of his preseason goals, “We have goals that we need to reach by the first game, we’ll continue to build on that. We’re playing against Hapoel Beer Sheva in the next game which will be much more aggressive and that’s good for us. We want to see how we deal with their physicality.”

Justin Smith spoke about his performance following the game, “I felt pretty good and tried to let the game come to me. I hit some floaters and my teammates found me on a lot of cuts and stuff around the basket and I was able to finish.”

The big man also spoke about what needs to be worked on, “Defensively we have to have more intensity throughout the entire game as we went thriving seem lulls especially during the third quarter. We have to stay consistent offensively trying to run our motion to get good looks, but that will come as we play with each other and get more experience within the system.”

Maccabi Rishon Le’Zion defeated Hapoel Beer Sheva 89-72 thanks to a big second quarter to head into halftime with a 43-30 lead and never looked back to take the win. DJ Burns and Marcus Williams each scored 18 points a piece while Qua Grant added 14 points in the victory while CJ Elleby scored 20 points, Amit Gershon chipped in with 15 points and Michael Foster Jr. put in 14 points in the loss.