{"id":30836,"date":"2011-03-30T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-30T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/sofo-i-think-we-can-win-the-series\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:37:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:37:53","slug":"sofo-i-think-we-can-win-the-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/sofo-i-think-we-can-win-the-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Sofo: \u201cI think we can win the series&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>By Amy Samin<\/FONT> <BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Unlike the first two games, Caja Laboral posted very low shooting averages (5 of 22 from three point range). What made the difference? Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv\u2019s head coach <B>David Blatt<\/B> explained: \u201cTonight we played at home and that made things easier for the players in terms of the atmosphere, and also perhaps the intensity we\u2019re able to implement here. The guys played defense at the highest of levels, and they deserve a lot of praise. That\u2019s exactly the way to lower your opponent\u2019s shooting averages.\u201d<\/FONT> <BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>\u201cIt was obvious that sooner or later our shooting averages would come back up to what they\u2019ve been,\u201d Blatt added. \u201cTheir averages from the distances they love so much declined, and the result reflects that. It\u2019s one game, and doesn\u2019t have a lot of impact on Thursday\u2019s game, though we\u2019re going into another home game with a 2 \u2013 1 advantage. It\u2019s obvious today that we are among the 8 best teams in Europe. It\u2019s a lot of fun to coach Maccabi, the players love the team. The people here [in Nokia Arena] understand how much these players are giving everything they have, and playing with all their hearts.\u201d<\/FONT> <\/P> <P align=center><IFRAME title=\"YouTube video player\" height=330 src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Zxz6FfwqmCI\" frameBorder=0 width=425 allowfullscreen><\/IFRAME><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>\u201cWe knew that Pargo has great ability,\u201d the coach said in reference to the game\u2019s MVP. \u201cHe\u2019s so young, but with the qualities of a more experienced player. He was tremendous today. The fans helped us when things weren\u2019t going well, and that shows the maturity of the crowd. It wasn\u2019t as easy as it looked today; we simply played better. In a way, the guys were playing for Perkins [who was injured at the start of the second quarter and left the game].\u201d<\/FONT> <BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial><B>Sofoklis Schortsanitis<\/B>: \u201cThe game was difficult, but Jeremy had a great game, as did Blu. We looked at Blu and saw that this was his day. I screened for him and he made some crazy shots, that was amazing &#8211; it was fun to watch.\u201d <\/FONT><BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial>When asked if he was surprised by the big point difference, Sofo replied, \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be relaxed about the difference because you never know. We\u2019ll try to do the same on Thursday; we\u2019re on the right way but it\u2019s not going to happen easily. The fans helped us greatly tonight, especially in the third quarter when we really needed it. With these fans and our strong will, I feel we will win the next game and advance to the Final Four in Barcelona.\u201d<\/FONT><\/P> <P align=center><IMG border=1 hspace=0 alt=\"\" align=baseline src=\"https:\/\/www.maccabi.co.il\/mtpic\/seffi_28.jpg\"><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial><B>Chuck Eidson<\/B>: \u201cIt was a big game for us, we played good, and did the things that Coach asked us to do. We played like a team. Unfortunately, tonight we lost Doron and I think everybody in the locker room right now is feeling that.\u201d When asked if he played for him after Perkins left the game, Eidson replied, \u201cYeah, you have to. This is a guy who\u2019s been with us every day all year, and it hurts your heart a little bit, but you know that you\u2019ve got to keep going and keep playing.\u201d When asked what Maccabi needs to do to get the win on Thursday against a team that will be fighting for their lives, Eidson said, \u201cThey\u2019re a good team, and we don\u2019t expect anything different. We\u2019re going to need to carry over from this game and play just as hard.\u201d<\/FONT> <BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial><B>Lior Eliyahu<\/B> added: \u201cIn the second and third quarters we played great defense, and that was what helped us win the game.\u201d<\/FONT> <BR><\/P> <P><FONT size=2 face=Arial><B>Dusko Ivanovic<\/B>: \u201cWe didn\u2019t play good defense tonight. We turned the ball over too many times and it allowed Maccabi to make runs and punish us with fast break points. This series is wide open and anything can happen. The injury of Perkins will affect Maccabi, not my team, so they need to be the ones to say how it will affect the next games. We\u2019re not as tired as people as people may think. We can still win.\u201d<\/FONT> <BR><BR><\/P> <P><A href=\"https:\/\/www.samintranslations.com\/\" target=_blank><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><U>www.samintranslations.com<\/U><\/FONT><\/A><FONT size=2 face=Arial> <\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maccabi is one game away from the Final Four after their 81 \u2013 60 victory over Caja Laboral puts the best of five series at 2 \u2013 1.  Blatt: \u201cIt\u2019s fun to coach this team.  Pargo was tremendous.\u201d  Eliyahu: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-30836","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\/30836","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=30836"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496041,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30836\/revisions\/496041"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30836"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=30836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}