“Was this a big game? I didn’t know. It’s the derby, but that’s it.”

Scottie Wilbekin and Maccabi Tel Aviv certainly put Friday’s loss to Hapoel Gilboa Gail way behind them as they demolished a game but overmatched Hapoel Tel Aviv 85-69 in the Big Derby. It was a contest that was never, ever in doubt from the first minute when Tyrique Jones was called for an offensive foul off the bat as the Yellow & Blue never looked back.

The guard came into the game like a man on a mission especially after not having been dressed for Friday’s defeat due to the fact that teams are limited to a maximum of five imports allowed to play in an Israeli league game. Wilbekin was focussed and came out flying scoring 18 of his 23 points in the first half essentially playing as a one man wrecking show.

“We told ourselves to just focus on the game and only talk to ourselves and control what we can control,” explained the Florida Gators product at the postgame presser.

Whether it was from long distance or the free throw line Wilbekin scored and scored and scored some more making the lives of Reds fans all that more difficult especially after having blown a 1-0 lead on the football pitch giving up a 95th minute goal to Kiryat Shemona to split the points in Israeli footy. All in all it was not a good night for Hapoel despite Yam Madar, the Boston Celtics draft pick scoring 22 points.

“We were very concentrated and we started the game the way we wanted to. We had a good passing game on offense and we shot well from outside as we controlled the game and deserved the win,” said an upbeat Maccabi coach Ioannis Sfairopoulos.

There was no way Sfairopoulos was going to allow what occurred on Friday afternoon to happen again, no way, no how. The Greek bench boss wasn’t going to allow his players the chance to even think they could walkover the Reds without actually playing the game in all seriousness. Maccabi is a team where winning is a way of life and losing is unacceptable. With one of the club’s owners Richard Deitz in the house, the Yellow & Blue weren’t going to lay another egg as they did just before Shabbat came in setting up a pretty bad weekend for the team.

“We want to win all of the games,” Sfairopoulos continued. “The players are human beings. The mentality is to fight all the time. This is how we played the game tonight starting with defense. For me the most important part is the mentality.”

Hapoel coach Ioannis Kastritis knew that he along with his team were going to be in for a rough time after Maccabi’s loss to Gilboa, “We had to compete against a team that was coming off a bad game.”

Watching Gilboa Galil celebrate on the Yad Eliyahu court was not something Wilbekin and Co. wanted to see and will do their best that it won’t happen again. It’s never fun to lose but to lose at home and then have the opposition rub it into your faces, well that’s not pleasant and payback down the road won’t be kind.

“It motivated me for the next game against Gilboa. The bigger problem about the game was that it was an early. They (Gilboa) were waiting for that game since the season started and they celebrated like they won a championship,” Wilbekin exclaimed.

Both teams have games coming up, but only one of the two now who their next opponent actually is and that’s Hapoel Tel Aviv who welcome Bnei Herzliya to the Drive In on Wednesday in what is the most important game of the week as both teams are looking to move out of the lower half of the standings and as far away as possible from the relegation zone which will see two teams head down to the Leumit League next season. Despite playing well over the course of the final two quarters of the Derby, Coach Kastritis doesn’t want to rely on those twenty minutes ahas of Wednesday.

“We have to come into that game full of confidence an against Eilat we showed what we can do as a team. This is a big game and we know how important it is to win that game.”

Bar Timor echoed his coach’s thoughts about the upcoming clash, “We have to put this game behind us fast and prepare for Wednesday. We don’t have time to dwell on this one.”

In Maccabi’s case, they are scheduled to play Khimki at home on Thursday in Euroleague action and despite the Israeli government allowing private foreign aircraft to land in Israel the cost is much higher than what the Russian team would have originally had to pay and it’s still unclear if the referees would even be able to find their way into the country. There has been talk that the Yellow & Blue will play two Israel league games this week but as of Monday morning it’s still unclear as to what the final decision will be.

“This year is a very strange year,” began Sfairopoulos. “We don’t know if Khimki will come to the game, if they don’t come we will play league games. Our job is not easy. Corona affects all the teams.”

As for Wilbekin, he’s just content with not looking to far into the future, “I’m happy we have off tomorrow and whoever we have to prepare for we will. It’s a crazy season, crazy year. We just try to focus one day at a time.”