{"id":26824,"date":"2007-08-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/israel-qualifies-for-eurobasket-2007\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:21:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:21:03","slug":"israel-qualifies-for-eurobasket-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/israel-qualifies-for-eurobasket-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel qualifies for Eurobasket 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 18.75pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><\/SPAN><BR><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 18.75pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\">Israel has qualified for the Eurobasket 2007 tournament, after beating Macedonia 92-87 in Friday evening&#8217;s crucial last chance qualifier. The Israelis had beaten Bosnia and Herzegovina in their previous game. <\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 18.75pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><IMG class=white_border height=480 alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eurobasket2007.org\/en\/files\/{081BF6B8-C30B-4DA3-B183-947DB0EC5FBF}large_v.jpg\" width=360 border=0><\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 18.75pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = \"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\" \/><o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><BR><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN: 7.5pt 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\">The national team kicks off its Eurobasket campaign on Monday against Greece, who are the reigning European champions and World Championship runner-ups and are considered clear favorites for the game. <o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 7.5pt 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN: 7.5pt 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\">The Israelis will also have to deal with Serbia and Russia in Group A of the competition. Russia is currently being guided by David Blatt. <o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 7.5pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\">Tzvika Sherf&#8217;s side had to survive a defiant challenge from a veteran FYROM side, which almost completed a dramatic comeback in the final minutes. But the Israelis eventually held on with a brilliant backcourt display. <o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 7.5pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\">Sherf: &#8220;This is an important win for Israeli basketball. We have been through qualification before, but this summer was very hard. We deserve this success. This is a very proud team that always puts in the maximum effort&#8221;.<BR><SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 7.5pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><IMG src=\"https:\/\/www.eurobasket2007.org\/en\/files\/{F57FC99D-9B7C-4D49-B928-E911802B290B}large_h.jpg\" border=0><\/SPAN><\/SPAN><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 7.5pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><\/SPAN><o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><BR><\/P> <P style=\"MARGIN-BOTTOM: 7.5pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\">Yotam Halperin scored 15 of his 26 points in the first period and looked virtually unstoppable. Meir Tapiro shook off the rust and registered 20 points, 6 boards and 7 assists. Ido Kozikaro did a good job in the paint with 6 points and 10 boards. Lior Eliyahu finished with 15 points in just 19 minutes of play. <o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 150%\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial\"><\/SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><BR><o:p><\/o:p><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <DIV><\/DIV> <DIV><\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The national team, guided by Zvika Sherf, beat Macedonia 92-87 and won the &#8220;last chance tournament&#8221;. Halperin scored 26<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-26824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494134,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26824\/revisions\/494134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26824"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=26824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}