{"id":30076,"date":"2010-10-15T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blatt-we-played-great-in-the-first-half-ive-learned-a-lot\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:35:39","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:35:39","slug":"blatt-we-played-great-in-the-first-half-ive-learned-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/blatt-we-played-great-in-the-first-half-ive-learned-a-lot\/","title":{"rendered":"Blatt: \u201cWe played great in the first half. I\u2019ve learned a lot.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Amy Samin<\/FONT>

<\/P>

\u201cWe have good reason to be happy,\u201d said Maccabi\u2019s head coach David Blatt<\/B> after the game.
\u201cWe were just wonderful in the first half.
Jerusalem was great in the third quarter.
Oded\u2019s (Oded Katash, head coach of Hapoel) teams are usually excellent in the third quarter.
It\u2019s not easy to play in Malha Arena.
We\u2019ve won the tournament after not winning it for the last few years.
For this point in the season we look just fine.
We\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/FONT>

<\/P>

\u201cTeams can learn what it is they want; the question is what are we learning?\u201d said Blatt in reference to a question about future opponents.
\u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot from the game tonight.\u201d<\/FONT>
<\/P>

<\/EMBED><\/P>

\u201cWe made things hard on ourselves in the second half.
We weren\u2019t aggressive enough, and we paid for it dearly.
I\u2019m happy we showed character and were able to pull out the win,\u201d added Lior Eliyahu<\/B>.
\u201cWe\u2019ll take the first half from this game.
We knew it would be tough.
The arena was full of Hapoel fans.
It\u2019s always tough to play against Hapoel Jerusalem at Malha Arena.\u201d<\/FONT>

<\/P>

Guy Pnini<\/B> said, \u201cWe played against a good team on their home court.
We\u2019ve finished up a great week.
We saw players in better shape playing with better ability.
We\u2019re happy to have our first title; it\u2019s one of the goals we set for ourselves.
We want to continue in the same way.\u201d<\/FONT>

<\/P>

\u201cIn the second half Jerusalem was a lot more aggressive than we were and it was only at the end that we were able to open up the lead,\u201d said co-captain Tal Burstein<\/B>.
\u201cWe\u2019re working very hard, even in practices.
We still have a lot of things to improve, including coordination on defense and on offense.
The guys are eager and hungry, and I feel great.
I\u2019m in good shape thanks to playing for the National Team (over the summer).
We\u2019re trying to run as much as we can and find one another on the court.\u201d<\/FONT>

<\/P>

Game MVP Jeremy Pargo<\/B> said, \u201cI just want to win, I don\u2019t care how many points I score.
The goal is to win, and we have a great team for that.
I\u2019m learning a lot with Maccabi and having a great time.\u201d
\u201cJerusalem is an excellent team.
We were more focused at the end of the game, and we got the win\u201d concluded Sofoklis Schortsanitis<\/B>.<\/FONT>

<\/P>

samintranslations@yahoo.com<\/U><\/FONT><\/A> <\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv\u2019s head coach said after winning the League Cup: \u201cWe\u2019re ready. We have good reason to be happy.\u201d Eliyahu: \u201cIt\u2019s always tough against Jerusalem at Malha Arena.\u201d (Photos: BSL) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-30076","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\/30076","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=30076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495704,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30076\/revisions\/495704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30076"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=30076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}