Frustration and anger at Maccabi Tel Aviv: "Instead of moving forward, we went backwards"

The Yellows looked broken after the defeat in the second playoff game against Real Madrid, and the club wondered: "It is not clear what we were trying to do."

The group rejects allegations of overconfidence and still believes that the series can be turned: "We are with our backs to the wall"

Or Shakedi, we sent to Madrid

23/04/2022

Saturday, April 23, 2022, 8:30 p.m.

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Maccabi Tel Aviv fans cheer on the players in Madrid (Maccabi Tel Aviv)

1. Maccabi Tel Aviv's Final Four dreams suffered a severe blow last night (Friday), with a 95:66 defeat by Real Madrid at Wizink Center in the second game of the Euroleague quarterfinal series.

The Yellows will hope to be the first team in the history of the factory to turn a 2: 0 deficit into a 2: 3 victory in the series, and will want to take a first step in this direction in the third game to be held at Yad Eliyahu this coming Tuesday.

Maccabi started the game well and led 16:18 after five minutes, but at this point it got stuck in the attack and Real continued at a dizzying pace on the way to 26:35 after the first 10 minutes, and 37:56 at the break, with the Blancos scoring eight threes in the first half and controlling the rebound The attack.

Maccabi wanted to return differently from the locker room, but in practice the gap did not drop by 20 points at any stage and the Spaniards won easily.

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The faces of the players in the locker room area at the end told the story.

James Nanley and Jaylen Reynolds were taken for drug tests and other actors sitting on the floor near the locker room looked frustrated and disappointed by the heavy defeat.

"I'm frustrated and angry, we do not deserve to play like this at this level, we went through a lot this season, we had a lot of challenges and we wanted to look better than that," said captain John Dibertolomeo. "This season. We have another challenge and we have to face it."

Keenan Evans added: "We were a bit in the fog after the opening and could not come back. We fought, but we lost balls and when you have more assists losses, it will not be a nice game. We have to put the game behind us, not think about it too much. It can not be changed. "We need to move on to the next game."

More losses than assists.

Evans (Photo: GettyImages, Sonia Canada)

Immediately after the game, the people of Maccabi Tel Aviv and the fans left for the airport, when they also encountered a lack of organization that made it difficult to get the flights out on time.

At the airport, the team members sounded disappointed with what they saw on the pitch, claiming that the players would have looked less organized on the floor than they did in the first game of the series last Wednesday.

"If you take the game on Wednesday, it was clear what did not work - they scored a crazy percentage and finished the game," explained one of the Maccabi Tel Aviv players in the field, "If you take the game tonight, you can not understand what they tried to do. "At Real, the shots from the outside at the beginning were a direct continuation of the previous game. Instead of going forward, we went backwards."

Avi Even was also angry at the end about how the team looked: "I have to see it again, we started the game well offensively, and unfortunately as in the first game there was a section of a few bad minutes of our defense, they mostly took advantage of it for easy points, and from there the quality "Our defensive game was much less good. Real took advantage of that and increased the difference."

Frustration at Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Avi Even (Photo: GettyImages, Sonia Canada)

3. We will return 72 hours before last night's game.

At the Haight Hotel in central Madrid, where Maccabi Tel Aviv sleeps, the players finished dinner after a long flight and went up to smiling and confident rooms - a completely different picture from what they looked like after the second game.

One of the players even said on Tuesday night: "If we play as we know, we will beat Real comfortably."

The team rejects the possibility that the players came with excessive confidence to the matches: "I do not think we had excess confidence. We need confidence, believe in each other. In Wednesday's game we played better than tonight's game, but tonight they beat us all over the field," said captain Dibertolomeo. .

Keenan Evans continued in the captain's line: "Every player came into the game with the right attitude, especially for the second game after we lost in the first, we came very hungry and wanted to win, but we could not produce a good game."

4. It looks a bit detached after last night's game, but Maccabi Tel Aviv are building and believing that this coming Tuesday at Yad Eliyahu they will look completely different and be able to come back to life against Real Madrid.

The team mentioned that only last season two teams managed to come out of a 2: 0 deficit after the first week of games and forced a fifth game, when in the past three more such cases happened.

Maccabi hopes that together with the special atmosphere that Yad Eliyahu has had recently, and the professional changes that will be made, they will be able to come out with the victory on Tuesday.

"We will come to fight, I hope our fans will be behind us, we need them all, and we will come back to ourselves. We will have a few days to refresh, we will return to the hall to work together, and we will be ready for a big war," Evans said.

Dibertolomeo added: "There is no tomorrow. We are with our backs to the wall, we can not afford any more losses, we have to play our basketball, we have not played according to our abilities today."

Excess confidence?

James Nanley (Photo: Reuters)

5. While Maccabi are trying to understand what happened and how they got in the lead in the second game in the series, Real Madrid admitted last night that they did not expect such an easy game, and did not think ten days ago that they would be one win away from the Final Four after two games in the playoffs.

"We feel great, but our work is not over," said Vincent Poirier, who excelled with 16 points and 10 rebounds. "We know it's hard to play in Tel Aviv. There will be two tough games there. We have to win one. "I personally did my job, took a lot of rebounds on offense and gave the team opportunities to score again. That's my job. I'm very happy."

Sergio Yui, who bombed 5 threes en route to 17 points, concluded: "We know we have not done a great job in the last month and a half. Now it's the playoffs. I think the team did an amazing job in both games. We have to finish the job there, and are already thinking about The third game. "

• sport

• basketball

• Euroleague and European basketball

Tags

• Maccabi Tel Aviv in basketball

• Real Madrid in basketball