Maccabi Tel Aviv walloped Hapoel Tel Aviv 96-75 late Tuesday night as Jaylen Hoard set the tone early on to help the yellow-and-blue score at will to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five Israeli league championship series.
Game 2 will take place on Thursday night back at Yad Eliyahu with Hapoel Tel Aviv as the hosts as the Reds will look to even up the series while Maccabi will try and take a stranglehold lead and move to within one game of the league title.
Oded Katash’s squad came out strong as Hoard and Roman Sorkin both took the bull by the horns early on.
Chris Jones and Oz Blayzer kept Hapoel close, but Jimmy Clark scored while Hoard kept pouring in the points to give Maccabi a 49-34 advantage at halftime. Johnathan Motley, Tai Odiase and Yam Madar tried to chip away at the lead for Dimitrios Itoudis’s charges, but John DiBartolomeo, Oshae Brissett, Hoard, Clark and Iffe Lundberg wouldn’t have any of it as Maccabi went up by 20 points and kept filling the basket to take a 1-0 series lead.
Hoard ended up with 20 points, Brissett added 16 points while Diartolomeo and Clark each put in 15 points in the win as Motley scored 12 points for Hapoel in the loss.
Maccabi coach 'happy' with game 1 victory
Katash reflected on Maccabi’s series-opening victory.
“I’m really happy with how we played; we were focused and we were there from the first minute. The crowd was there for us and we came in with a very short rotation, but all the players were so committed. Now we have to be ready to go in just another couple of days. Of course, we want to end the season with a double and we worked hard for home-court advantage all season long and we enjoyed playing in this game, with a lot of credit to our fans.”
Hapoel bench boss Itoudis looked back at the loss.
“It was not us in this game and we have to change the mindset drastically and immediately. Maccabi scored more in second-chance points and in transition which says how much they outhustled us. However, this will make us more eager for the next game. Maccabi forced turnovers and there was just no positivity from this game. We need to see who we are and where we are, nothing worked.”
DiBartolomeo, the yellow-and-blue captain, spoke about the win.
“I liked how we started the game and the series, we dropped the later there against them but we came out and started on the right form. But it’s only one game and we have to make adjustments and be better for Game 2. A lot of credit goes to the coaches for the game plan and while we are missing some guys due to injuries everyone is stepping up. It feels great to win in front of our crowd and it’s a derby, but it’s only one game.”
Hapoel captain Bar Timor also commented on the defeat.
“We all saw what happened here today and it was a good lesson for the next game. We have to react and battle back now and ready ourselves for Game 2. I can’t really explain what occurred this time around but it’s a long series and we have time to make some corrections. We didn’t fight and we didn’t battle. We can’t look like this again.”
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