Maccabi’s head coach was delighted with the win in Madrid, which guaranteed the team home court advantage in the quarterfinals: “Whoever doesn’t believe in God should come and see a game like this.”
By Amy Samin
If you Google “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat” you’ll get a video of the last seven minutes of Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv’s 66 – 64 victory over Real Madrid Thursday night.
The win guarantees Maccabi the home court advantage in the quarterfinals against Partisan Belgrade.
It also delays a meeting with Barcelona, the favorite to win the Euroleague final.
The quarterfinals, which will be played as a best of five series, open on March 25th with Maccabi hosting Partisan at Nokia Arena; the second game will be played at Nokia two days later.
The following two games (if needed) will be played in the Serbian capital, while a fifth game, should it be necessary, will be played in Tel Aviv.
If Maccabi wins the series against Partisan, they will head to Paris for the Final Four, which will take place from the 5th to the 7th of April.
“Whoever doesn’t believe in God should come and see a game like this,” declared Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv’s head coach, Pini Gershon.
“I’ve had some big wins in my career.
No one remembers Bologna, and this is even bigger than that win.
I hope everyone realizes that we need to keep up all the work we’ve done so far, to get to the Final Four, because that’s a mission that’s beyond our potential.
Obviously, this is a huge win.
Games like this, and all of the criticism we get, are what keep me going and give me the drive to win, because otherwise it’s impossible to win.”
“The first thing I had to do was give them back their faith in themselves,” Gershon said, revealing the secret of the team’s monumental comeback, “even in the second half, when we allowed them 31 points even with the lousy percentages they were shooting.
I said that if we can keep Real in that area, we can win, because I knew we wouldn’t play as badly as we did in the first half.
In the final minutes we got the ball to Chuck Eidson and did things the right way.
He took the game on himself, which is exactly where I wanted it, because Anderson had turned over a lot of balls, though some of that was my fault.”
“We couldn’t take the lead in the first half because we did what they wanted us to do, but for the last twenty minutes, I told them to do what I said, because if they went it alone we wouldn’t win.”
When asked about the quarterfinals, Gershon responded, “Our chances against Partisan look good.
We need to respect them.
They beat Panathinaikos and Barcelona; it won’t be easy, but we’ve got a chance.”
Game MVP Doron Perkins said after the game: “You might not realize it, but this might be our biggest step to the Final Four.
We played with a lot of heart.
We knew that we were making shots; that they were gonna fall.
Everybody played their butts off.”
When asked about the home court advantage against Partisan in the quarterfinals, Perkins replied, “It’s great.
As you can see, we’re a lot better team at home.
Hopefully, we’ll have that confidence, but they’re a good team, too.
They’re in the Final 8 for a reason, so we can’t just run over them.”
Alan Anderson, who finished the game with only 8 points said, “What a crazy game!
We’re on Cloud 9.
It was an amazing win and we’re really happy.”
Israeli forward Guy Pnini was also in high spirits after the game: “We’ve shown everyone who Maccabi Tel Aviv is, and what we can do.
It’s a huge win, tough and sweet.
We’re on Cloud 9.
We’ve gone from being a team that took a lot of criticism to a team that’s number one in the group that was considered the toughest, one we weren’t sure we’d be able to beat, and headed for the quarterfinals.
We even guaranteed our place in the quarterfinals last week.
There’s no greater happiness.”
Another player who had an outstanding game, David Bluthenthal, said, “We’re really happy and ready to celebrate.
We did the job; we beat Real Madrid, and not just that we did it in front of their home crowd.
I don’t think there’s one crazier than theirs.
We’re looking ahead now, Partisan is a good team, but we know that in situations like this anything can happen; we’ll fight until the last second.”
Real Madrid head coach Ettore Messina had this to say: “I’m very disappointed.
We were in control for most of the game, and it doesn’t make sense that we got to the fourth quarter and just lost our heads.
Maccabi played a great game and they deserve to be congratulated.
The next stage is going to be very tough.
We know very well who Barcelona is, but we’re up to it. When we reach the moment of truth we’ll figure out how to get to the Final Four.”
Madrid’s center, Ante Tomic, added, “I don’t know how we lost this game.
In a month and a half Maccabi Tel Aviv beat us twice, which is crazy.
Now we need to face Barcelona, who we didn’t want to play against at this point.
We’ll do everything possible to make it to the Final Four, but for now we’re more disappointed than ever, especially because this game was already in our pocket.”
