Zalgiris surprised Hapoel Tel Aviv 93-80 in what was the Reds first Euroleague game on their home court of Yad Eliyahu in front of almost 10,000 fans. Dimitrios Itoudis’s squad grabbed an early lead and took a 40-39 advantage into halftime thanks to Johnathan Motley and Ish Wainright. But the visitors came back strong in the third quarter with fine play by guards Maodo Lo and Nigel Williams-Goss along with big man Moses Wright to go up by double digits as they cruised to the victory.

With the defeat, Hapoel’s record moved to 13-6 as the reds complete the first round of play in second place just behind Valencia as Itoudis’s team will now ready for an Israeli league encounter with Hapoel Jerusalem on Saturday night which will be followed up by another home Euroleague game against Dubai.

Chris Jones scored 18 points, Elijah Bryant added 14 points and Dan Oturu put in 12 points in the loss while Williams-Goss scored 17 points, Wright chipped in with 15 points and Sylvain Francisco scored 13 points in the win.

Hapoel Tel Aviv Head Coach Dimitrios Itoudis spoke about the loss, “Zalgiris was the better team and the atmosphere wasn’t enough for the players to recognize to pick up their aggressiveness. We opened the game well, but they outhustled us and outplayed us and I’m very mad about that. We missed a lot of good shots.”

Zalgiris bench boss Tomas Masiulis gave his thoughts on the victory, “I think we played pretty good defense in the second and third quarters towards a lot of what we decided before the game. Some shots that we gave, they did score, but I think that defense was the key.”

Antonio Blakeney spoke about the loss, “Every game, anybody can beat you. You can’t take anybody lightly. In this game, we didn’t play well. I don’t think it had anything to do with them. It’s more about us. We didn’t guard well, so we couldn’t get out in transition. We played a lot of half-court basketball, they switched and we got a little stagnant.”

Maodo Lo looked back at the win, “Against the top team in the EuroLeague right now, we were able to grab a great away win. We were just able to try to execute our game plan, try to stay focused for the entirety of the game and took advantage of our size that we had in the game and use that.”

Ish Wainright went from deep, as Yam Madar and Collin Malcolm also scored for Hapoel Tel Aviv to get the game underway while Ignas Brazdeikis responded for Zalgiris but Johnathan Motley and Chris Jones both went from deep to give the Reds a 25-18 lead after ten minutes of play.

Sylvain Francisco and Elijah Bryant traded baskets to start the second quarter, Motley took over with a deuce, triple and then an acrobatic layup but Azuolas Tubelis scored a pair of baskets, Nigel Williams-Goss put in a 3-point play and a jumper to cut the gap to just a single point, 40-39 at halftime.

Moses Wright led off the third quarter from deep, Lo dropped a 3-point play and added a 3-pointer to go up 48-41, Dan Oturu began to score in the a paint, but Wright countered with a trio of baskets including a big dunk and Dustin Sleva drained a triple to give Zalgiris a 63-53 lead after thirty minutes of action.

Blakeney scored to open the fourth quarter, Tubelis scored inside as Williams-Goss went from the outside, Chris Jones and Arnas Butkevicius traded triples, Bryant went from the outside and inside, but more points from Wright and Butkevicius closed out the Zalgiris win.