{"id":27996,"date":"2008-09-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-20T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/16-points-for-eliyahu-israel-is-headed-for-the-european-championship\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:24:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:24:49","slug":"16-points-for-eliyahu-israel-is-headed-for-the-european-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/16-points-for-eliyahu-israel-is-headed-for-the-european-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"16 Points for Eliyahu; Israel is Headed for the European Championship!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN><\/FONT><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt\"><FONT face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\"><FONT size=2>In one of its best games of all time, the Israeli national team defeated Czech Republic 98 &#8211; 61 Saturday night at Nokia Stadium.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN>The win, paired with <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = \"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags\" \/><st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Turkey<\/st1:country-region>\u2019s 80 \u2013 77 victory over <st1:place w:st=\"on\"><st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">France<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place>, automatically qualified the Israelis for the European Championship.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN><st1:place w:st=\"on\"><st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Israel<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place> dominated the game from the beginning, and extended its lead every quarter, driven by the knowledge that a victory by 30 or more points would better its chances of qualifying.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN>Halperin and Tapiro ran the game expertly, aided by the ability of Yaniv Green and Lior Eliyahu to bring the fans at Nokia to their feet with incredible dunks.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = \"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\" \/><o:p><\/o:p><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt\"><o:p><FONT face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=2><BR><\/FONT><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt\"><FONT face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\"><FONT size=2>The Israeli national team will be participating for the ninth consecutive time in the European Championship for national teams.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><BR><\/SPAN>Also taking part will be four former coaches from Maccabi Tel Aviv: Zvika Sherf (<st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Israel<\/st1:country-region>), Pini Gershon (<st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Bulgaria<\/st1:country-region>), Muli Katzurin (<st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Poland<\/st1:country-region>), and David Blatt (<st1:place w:st=\"on\"><st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Russia<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place>).<o:p><\/o:p><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt\"><o:p><FONT face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=2><BR><\/FONT><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt\"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt\"><FONT face=\"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\" size=2><STRONG>Points scored for <st1:place w:st=\"on\"><st1:country-region w:st=\"on\">Israel<\/st1:country-region><\/st1:place><\/STRONG>: Halperin 25 (7 assists), Tapiro 24 (6 rebounds, 6 assists), Eliyahu 16 (9 rebounds), Limonad 15, Green 14, Kozikaro and Pnini 2 points each.<\/FONT><\/SPAN><SPAN lang=HE dir=rtl style=\"FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><o:p><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel\u2019s national team trounced the Czech Republic 98 \u2013 61 in a near-perfect game Saturday night<\/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-27996","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\/27996","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=27996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494674,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27996\/revisions\/494674"}],"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=27996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27996"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=27996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}