The reigning champions will head out to last year’s Winner league runner-up Rishon LeZion, for their Israeli season opener. Giannis Sfairopoulos: “Want to begin the Israeli league with a great effort, high energy, and follow the game plan to be ready to compete”
Elijah Bryant, Scottie Wilbekin, Nate Wolters, Othello Hunter, and Tarik Black were registered as the team’s foreigners. As for Tyler Dorsey, Sandy Cohen, Angelo Caloiaro, and Quincy Acy, they won’t dress up for this game. Omri Casspi intends to experience his first Israeli league action since the 2008/09 finals, then he scored 15 points and dropped 6 rebounds against Maccabi Haifa.
“It’s a very important game for us, we play against our rivals from last year’s final”, Said coach Giannis Sfairopoulos before the game. “Rishon is a solid team that plays well together and gets great contribution from their bench. We want to begin the Israeli league with a great effort, high energy, and follow the game plan to be ready to compete”.
The Orange team comes into the game after a tough, 55:88, loss to Promitheas Patras in their Eurocup debut game. In league play, the Tel-Avivians have a commanding 67:8 record over the wine city, with a plus 1054 point differential. Last season, Rishon Le’ Zion beat Maccabi in the Israeli Cup and Winner Cup. Still, in the Winner League, Maccabi came up on top with three regular-season wins and another victory in the league finals.
Rishon made a couple of changes to their squad this offseason, adding the versatile Jordan Swing, Alex Chubrevich, Devon Saddler, and Johnathan Williams while keeping Nimrod Tishman, Darryl Monroe, Adam Ariel, Alex Hamilton, Oz Blayzer and the 17-year-old Noam Dovrat.
