Maccabi’s coach after the 73:93 loss: “Even when they don’t score, they are able to win”. John-Di: “It’s not the outcome we wanted”
“First of all I would like to congratulate CSKA for the beautiful basketball tonight” said coach Neven Spahija, “We tried. We did some things and had some momentum during the game, but every time we had the chance to do something more, we missed open shots or turned over the ball. At the end, they are way better. I would say even two different planets. We are not even close to CSKA. I cannot say anything to my players because they really tried, they fought. But CSKA was as way better team. What bothered me most is we don’t turn over the ball in the EuroLeague. We are one of the best teams in the EuroLeague at avoiding turnovers and today we had 16 turnovers. And all of them CSKA took straight to our basket, making it impossible to set up our defense. And that was the key to the game. They won by 20 and a lot of those were fastbreak points. We limited them to 6 threes, their lowest of the season, but their quality and their possibility to play inside as well outside lets them play against everybody. Even when they don’t score, they are able to win”.
“They were more aggressive than us”, said Art Parakohuski who finished the game with 8P and 4R. “They are the best team in the EuroLeague for now and they showed that today on the court. We need to watch the video, but I think we didn’t do a good job on defense. They scored whenever they missed a shot. Against a team like CSKA you need a perfect game to win and we didn’t have a perfect game today”.
John DiBartolomeo summarized: “It’s not the outcome we wanted. They are a good team and we didn’t do what we needed to do to stay with them. At the end of the day, we need to learn from it and move on, because the next game is all the more important now”.
