Maccabi’s head coach Giannis Sfairopoulos after the road win over Hapoel Jerusalem: “Let’s enjoy the 5th win in 10 days and tomorrow will think of the next game”. Wilbekin: “We want to get every win we can”
“We saw two different halves”, said Coach Giannis Sfairopoulos. “The first half was incredible we played great basketball and with great
rhythm everything went well, we scored some tough shots. When you play the classico it’s not easy to continue with the same pace, also the other team is good and the other team is playing and we expected that Jerusalem will show their quality and that’s what happened”.“In the third period, they started really good”, coach Sfairopoulos concluded. “We didn’t move the ball and was really static and that gave them the option to make easy points on transition, this is their game, but I think that in the fourth period we started working better on offense we moved the ball and scored some baskets that kept our lead and I think that throughout the game we were up in their home court, we deserved the win, let’s enjoy the 5th win in 10 days and tomorrow will think of the next game”.
“In the first half everything was falling”, said the game MVP Scottie Wilbekin. “In the second half they did a good job coming in and playing a lot harder and we relaxed a little bit but we were able to pull through, it was a combination of them playing harder at home in front of their fans and maybe us relaxing too much. It’s very important, every game is important with the close standings right now, it’s really close so we want to get every win we can”.
“If we were able to win by a bigger margin we would like to”, said Jake Cohen. “We’re playing a lot of good teams in a short period of time, we’re gonna take wins however they come”. When asked about the difference between both halves, Cohen replied: “Jerusalem gets a lot more credit they came with a lot more focus and intensity and they kinda caught us on our heels a little bit, we knew it was going to be a difficult game, they got a lot of good players and they are really well coached, it took them some time to find their stride but none of us was surprised that it was a close game, we thought that coming in”.
