Maccabi Tel Aviv will take on Zalgiris, Thursday (21:05) at Yad Eliyahu in Tel Aviv as they will look to get back onto the winning track in Euroleague play after having lost three games in a road, all on the road as they now sport a 8-13 record good for 14th place in the standings.

The yellow-and-blue had gone on a hot streak the last time they faced the Lithuanians as they easily disposed of the Tomas Masiulus’s team 83-65 in what was the start of a 5-game winning streak. However, in that game, Oded Katash had arguably the team’s most prolific scorer in Lonnie Walker and it’s not clear if he will take part in Thursday’s proceedings.

With or without Walker, both Will Rayman and Jimmy Clark know that everyone else will need to pick up the slack or else the club may see the losing streak begin to spiral out of control and snowball from there.

“That’s really the key here,” Rayman began. “Because three losses in a row, you’re already in a position where you’re dropping in the standings. I feel like our whole identity is our depth. So it’s really important for the next man to step up. I think we’re capable and I know everybody else is up to the challenge.”

“We already know that,” Clark began. “Coming into this game, we feel the momentum shift after our couple of wins in a row [in the Israeli league]. We just want to get back in the win column. As long as we do that, keep practicing hard and come with the right game plan and the right mindset, I feel like we’ll do that.”

For Oded Katash, Zalgiris always presents a challenge for his team and in this game, their lead guard Nigel Williams-Goss will be out of action due to an injury, “This is a very difficult game. Žalgiris, even now over the days we prepared for them, is a very good team that knows exactly what it’s doing. A team with size, attacks the offensive rebound, things the Lithuanians have always done very well so it’s very challenging. Dominant big men and one guard [Sylvain Francisco] who is very dangerous.”

“As for Williams-Goss, he’s a very high-quality player, maybe even their best defender. I’m sure they miss him, but they still have enough weapons. You have to remember that we had Lonnie then, so both teams are arriving and need to make adjustments.”

Clark also spoke about Williams-Goss not being able to play, “You know, we always want to keep players healthy throughout this league, so it sucks to hear that. But for our mentality coming into this game, we just want to focus on who’s playing, focus on the game, and play against the players that are out there. That’s our main focus.”

Being back at home means that the home crowd will be behind Maccabi and that will obviously be a huge help as they look to get back in the win column Rayman explained.

“It’s huge. Like you saw after we beat ASVEL at home, we got a lot of confidence from the fans and everything. I feel like that really motivated us even more. So I think just winning at home here in front of the fans would be huge, and maybe we can start another win streak. We really need to. We just lost three in a row, so we need to win three in a row again.”

Katash also understands that if his team doesn’t get back to winning, there will be no chance to entertain the thought of playing on the postseason, “We need to do something extraordinary, special, to catch up in the EuroLeague and that’s not simple, certainly not with this schedule and the draw we got. We have a lot of road games and they’re not easy, and as I said, even the home games aren’t easy. We saw Žalgiris win here against Hapoel Tel Aviv, so we know it’s not easy.”

“We all agree, they’ve got a good team,” Rayman added. “They’re really deep, they play really fast. They’ve got a really good point guard and they play through their bigs. So it’s definitely going to be a test, but I thought we had a pretty good game plan against them the first time. We’re just going to try to come with that same mentality.”

“They also had a very impressive win against Red Star,” Katash said. “That means this is a team that knows what it’s doing and has a lot of quality. We’ll need to come very prepared, tactically. It’s not just about being aggressive. We need to be tactically prepared, to change defenses on Francisco, who is their main creator. He’s somewhat similar to Jared Harper in certain ways, and you can also learn a few things from the game against Jerusalem.”

Katash would very much like to see the characteristics that helped Maccabi get onto that five game winning streak back in the saddle for this game against Zalgiris in order to begin closing the gap to 10th place and what would be a Play In position.

“Our body language, the energy. We executed the game plan well and that’s something we’ll need in this game as well.”