Maccabi Tel Aviv takes the show to the road as they face Red Star Belgrade in Serbia on Thursday (20:00) as they look to continue their winning ways after having downed Baskonia last week in Israel. The Yellow & Blue’s record currently sits at 12-13 good for 12th place but have the same record as Fenerbahce and Bayern Munich who are in 10th and 11th spots respectively.

However, should the three Russian teams, CSKA Moscow, Zenit St. Petersburg and UNICS Kazan be permanently suspended for the 21/22 season then the results against those teams will be eliminated from the other 15 teams’s records. For Maccabi that would mean that they will then jump up to 7th place overall due to a 1-3 record against those teams.

Red Star Belgrade sport a 12-15 record and are in 14th place overall and also feature former Maccabi guard Nate Wolters who is averaging 11.1 points and 3.6 assists per game as well as big man Maik Zirbes. Nikola Kalinic leads the way for the Serbian club with 12.9 points. This past Tuesday, Dejan Radonjic’s squad downed Real Madrid 65-62 and have won 4 of their last five games.

Avi Even’s crew are well aware that they need to come back from this road trip with a win in their back pocket in order to better their chances to play in the postseason. After smashing Maccabi Rishon Le’Zion earlier this week by playing fast flowing, aggressive basketball, they know they will need to continue that style of play while also locking down on the defensive end of the floor.

“Belgrade’s home arena is one of the toughest to play in across Europe. Red Star is one of the best defensive teams and we need to raise our level of toughness and aggressiveness. We will need to find our pace and play tougher on defense for a longer period of time. They are a good team and a tough team, they beat Real this week. Against Rishon we saw ups and downs and we have to be consistent.”

Derrick Williams who put on quite the dunk display against Rishon spoke about not only playing well on the break offensively but also playing intelligent ball, “They want to get under our skin, play defense and get it the passing lanes. We have to play smart, we want to keep their crowd out of it and a lot of it has to do with us. We want to play well and in transition.

“They’re physical and they like to slow it down,” John Dibartolomeo said. “They played the other night and the game was in the 60’s. This is their 4th game in 8 days and hopefully they will have fatigued legs and come in more fresh. We want are playing more aggressive than the first round and hopefully that will translate to more baskets.”

As the Euroleague season heads into the stretch run, Williams understands that urgency is the name of the game right now with a ton of teams all bunched up fighting for playoff spots, “We are all in the same position, with only a handful of games left, so all games matter. This game will be very important for our season and our confidence going into the last six, seven games.”