Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv Loses to Hapoel Jerusalem, 91 - 77

By Amy Samin

Maccabi opened the game with Carlos Arroyo, Marcus Brown, Omri Casspi, D’or Fischer and Lior Eliyahu.
Hapoel’s starting five included Sharon Shason, Travis Watson, Timmy Bowers, Omar Sneed and Moran Rot.

Jerusalem scored first in the game with a basket by Sneed, who with 8 straight points took the hosts to a 10 – 4 lead four minutes into the first quarter.
Maccabi wasn’t able to break through the Hapoel defense, executing turnovers instead of points.
Finally, a huge block by Fischer ended with a fast break and a dunk by Eliyahu at the other end.
Eliyahu returned the favor to Fischer, and the score went to 12 – 8 with three minutes left in the quarter.
Eliyahu was definitely Maccabi’s main man in the first quarter, taking passes and handing out assists, but missed shots from outside the arc (0 for 5 in the first quarter for Maccabi), and a three-pointer by Roger Powell for Hapoel, kept Jerusalem comfortably in the lead.
The quarter ended with the score at 19 – 14.

Maccabi opened the second quarter with a three-pointer by Arroyo, coming within two of Jerusalem, but quickly fell back into difficulties on offense, repeatedly failing to score.
Hapoel responded with a flood of baskets, going on a 10 – 0 scoring rampage until Maccabi head coach Efy Birenboim finally called a time out with the score at 29 – 17, two minutes into the second quarter.
Whatever Efy said didn’t seem to make much difference, as Maccabi continued to struggle.
Bowers and company continued to batter the disorganized Maccabi defense, who quickly found themselves at a 36 – 20 deficit with four minutes left in the quarter.
Maccabi had nothing left to do but try and get the ball to Arroyo, but the point guard wasn’t in the zone, and failed to make his shots.
Maccabi went down by twenty, 46 – 26.
Close to the end of the quarter, Maccabi got points from Casspi and Fischer, but it wasn’t enough to stop Hapoel’s flood of baskets, and the half ended with the score at 51 – 30, in favor of Jerusalem.

Maccabi still had an entire half to get back in the game, but within two minutes of the start of the third quarter, they were down by 30.
Points by Arroyo and Casspi helped lower the gap to 60 – 40, halfway through the quarter.
But an almost complete absence of rebounds on defense and a practically non-existent offense stopped any momentum Maccabi might have found, and Jerusalem took advantage, racking up a 71 – 41 lead with three minutes left in the third quarter.
Casspi and Arroyo, who continued to be nearly the only scorers in the quarter, led their team on an 8 – 1 scoring run that chipped away at the huge Hapoel lead.
But a three-pointer by Bowers capped the quarter, and the buzzer sounded on a 75 – 49 Jerusalem lead.

Maccabi opened the final quarter of the game with strong defense, and that, together with a three-pointer by team captain Derrick Sharp and points by Fischer, took Maccabi on a 6 – 0 scoring run, and brought the Hapoel lead down to 20, 75 - 55 after a minute and a half of play.
Hapoel head coach Guy Goodes called a time out, which didn’t help much; Sharp scored 5 straight points, and strong defense by Maccabi brought the score to 75 – 60 four minutes into the quarter.
A three-pointer by Rot broke that momentum, and a tired-looking Maccabi couldn’t seem to break the 15 point lead barrier.

A shot from outside the arc by Shason and a dunk by Bowers closed the door on any hope of a comeback for Maccabi, and all that was left for them to do was try and narrow the gap and prevent the damage from being worse.
The game ended with a 91 – 77 victory for Hapoel Jerusalem over Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv.

Box Scores:

Maccabi: Arroyo 16 points, 6 assists; Casspi 13 points; Sharp 11 points; Burstein and Eliyahu 9 points each;
Fischer 7 points, 10 rebounds; Williams 6 points; Brown and Green 3 points each.

Hapoel: Bowers 27 points; Sneed 18 points; Watson 14 points; Powell 12 points.

“There were a lot of things that didn’t work today,” concluded Maccabi head coach Efy Birenboim.
“We were ready, but we froze completely.
People didn’t do even 20% of what we’d planned.
Later, people came into the game who prevented it from running away from us completely, to a 30 or 40 point difference.
It’s no secret that Jerusalem played better than we did.
This loss means we need to do some serious thinking, and to play better.
Jerusalem isn’t a better team than Maccabi Tel Aviv; they just overwhelmed us, that’s all.”

Tal Burstein:
“Jerusalem opened really strong at the very beginning of the game, and simply dominated it.
We didn’t have any responses for the things they did.
We didn’t react well, and we weren’t really in the game for the whole four quarters.
Today’s game was really one sided, we didn’t show enough ability to close their lead, and it kept getting bigger and bigger.
At the very end, we only succeeded in reducing that gap from very big to just big, and that doesn’t really matter all that much.”

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