The Israel Women’s National Basketball Team held the final training session ahead of Sunday’s Eurobasket qualification clash against Ireland in a home game that will take place in Riga, Latvia at 2:15pm Israel time. Both Jennie Simms and Alyssa Baron who miss the loss to France will be in teh squad and available to play for head coach Sharon Drucker’s squad.

With a 1-2 record in three qualifiers, Israel face a must win against the Irish ahead of the final international window in February when the blue-and-white will play a pair of home qualifiers against France and Latvia.

In the last game against the two teams, the Irish squad did’t respect the Israel national anthem Hatikva by turning away and they did not shake hands with the blue-and-white players prior to tipoff.vThe Irish have lost all three games they have played this campaign, including last Thursday when they fell 85-53 to Latvia.

Ahead of the game head coach Sharon Drucker said, “We managed to get the injured players back this game as we are well aware of its importance. There is tremendous desire to end this window with a victory. We are expecting a difficult and intense game and we want to meet this challenge. We finished our practice session and we are ready for the game.”

Gili Eisner also chimed in, “Sunday’s game is very important to us, especially at a time like this. We are coming in to give everything from the first second. We finished a good day of preparation and now all that remains is to arrive and finish this window with a victory.”