Maccabi’s head coach Giannis Sfairopoulos after the home loss to Holon: “We didn’t play tough”. John DiBartolomeo: “I think we got too comfortable”
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Entering to one of their most crucial weeks of the season Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv faced Hapoel Holon at home. The crew in yellow and blue fired on all cylinders in the first quarter enroute of a 30:15 lead. The visitors managed to imposed their will to complete the comeback in the second quarter but Maccabi reacted to end the first half having the edge, Holon went on a scoring frenzy in the third putting the yellows in chase mode. John-DiBartolomeo tried to spark the late comeback but Walden secured the 86:94 away win for Holon who also took the top of the domestic standings.
“I want to congratulate the team of Holon for the win”, said coach Giannis Sfairopoulos. “They deserve to win because they played most of the game better than us, we started the game
good, we got the lead and played good on offense and defense unfortunately in the second period we thought that it will be easy, I don’t why, we didn’t play good defense we allowed 32 points and we had 0 fouls most of the second period and that showed that we didn’t play tough and although at halftime we need to be tougher and to play good defense and to continue with a different way than in the second period it didn’t happen, unfortunately when you are not playing tough, there are no tactics to help you”.“We got off to a good start”, said John DiBartolomeo. “I think we got too comfortable after we got our lead and they made their run and it was just hard to stop their momentum they were beating us all over the court on both ends, to loose balls, to rebounds they were comfortable, and after the first quarter
unfortunately we let them dictate the game and they came in on top. We didn’t dictate, we needed to be much more aggressive on both ends of the floor we need to use our fouls smart especially when they’re on a run like that we need to do anything to break the momentum and we didn’t do that tonight and that was the consequence”.
