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Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Holon will battle for the BSL championship on Thursday after a thrilling night of basketball at the Nokia Arena on Tuesday. Maccabi survived a scare against Bnei Hasharon, winning 57-55 despite trailing for most of the second half. <\/SPAN><\/P> <\/SPAN> Nikola Vujcic led Maccabi, scoring 13 points, with Yotam Halperin the team’s only other player in double-figure with 12 points. “We play better when our backs are against the wall,” David Bluthenthal said after the game. “First and foremost we have to play tough on Thursday. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t think we could win on Thursday.” Jason Williams was unstoppable for Bnei Hasharon scoring 25 points. <\/SPAN><\/P> Maccabi got off to a quick start. Esteban Batista’s lay-up to end the first period gave Maccabi a 22-9 advantage. Amazingly, however, Effi Biremboim’s team managed to hold Maccabi to just two points in the final seven minutes of the first half. Bnei Hasharon continued to improve at the start of the third period and Erez Katz’s five straight points gave the team its first lead of the night (31-29). Halperin scored three points to end the quarter and cut Maccabi’s deficit to six points (50-44), setting up a thrilling final period. Four Alex Garcia points brought Tel Aviv within two points (52-50) and two Will Bynum free-throws meant the side was just one point down (53-52). Vujcic’s three-point move then gave Maccabi a 55-53 lead and the game was slipping away from Birenboim’s team. Williams still had the chance to tie the score when he was sent to the free-throw line after a poor Halperin miss. The American only managed to score one of two, but a Bynum free-throw miss at the other end would give Bnei Hasharon one last chance to claim the win. With the score at 57-55, Katz released a difficult three-pointer from the corner which went out off the rim and Maccabi went through to the final. Maccabi Tel Aviv survived a scare against Bnei Hasharon, 57-55. Vujcic led with 13 points. On Thursday: the final against Holon<\/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-27738","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\/27738","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=27738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494535,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27738\/revisions\/494535"}],"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=27738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27738"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=27738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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