Maccabi Tel Aviv blew past Hapoel Beer Sheva 108-83 as Jaylen Hoard and Roman Sorkin once again paced the yellow-and-blue to the victory as they punched their ticket to the semifinals. The southern reds began well with points from LJ Figueroa to grab a 25-24 after the opening frame but Sorkin and Hoard started to pour in the points in the second quarter to go up 53-43 by halftime and never looked back to notch the win. Hoard scored 19 points, Sorkin added 18 points and Marcio Santos scored 13 points in the victory while Marquis Barnett scored 26 points and Figueroa put in 22 points in the loss. <\/p>\n
Coach Oded Katash commented on his team’s performance after the game, \u201cDefensively, it took us 14\u201315 minutes to get into the flow of the game. Overall, I’m pleased with our approach; I think we came in motivated and determined. We didn’t start with enough focus, and there were a few shots they made that we could live with. After that, I think we played the right way, offensively as well. Overall, I’m very satisfied. As for the semifinals We’ll have to see who we get in the semifinals. It\u2019s not going to be easy. They\u2019re good teams, dangerous teams and very different from one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
The game MVP Jaylen Hoard shared his perspective, \u201cIt feels good. I’m happy that we were able to do a good job both defensively and offensively. I think we could have played better in the first game, so this was a great response. We have more time to prepare for our next opponent, which is good for us. I’m trying to help as much as I can. I hope we can go as far as possible, especially after what happened last year as the series was halted because of the war. It doesn’t matter to me who we face in the semifinals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yaniv Ravins, head coach of Hapoel Beer Sheva said, \u201cWe wanted this game to look different, but in the end we lost because of a few plays and aggressiveness. Tactically and defensively, we were in the game, but they grabbed 13 offensive rebounds in the first half, and then you’re chasing them the rest of the way. That’s very difficult. We replaced a very significant part of the team. On a personal level, together with the coaching staff, I realized there wouldn’t be any changes, so we decided to work with what we had.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maccabi Tel Aviv blew past Hapoel Beer Sheva 108-83 as Jaylen Hoard and Roman Sorkin once again paced the yellow-and-blue to the victory as they punched their ticket to the semifinals. The southern reds began well with points from LJ Figueroa to grab a 25-24 after the opening frame but Sorkin and Hoard started to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":180671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-180669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holy-land-hoops","tag-maccabi-tel-aviv","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n