Summary of today's events in sports, 18.11 (Sport1)
1. Maccabi Tel Aviv's decline in form continued last night (Friday) when the Yellows lost away 96:88 against Partizan Belgrade.
Following the loss, which was the third in three away games this season, Maccabi dropped to a record of four wins and four losses and went out of playoff range in the Euroleague.
After a series of games in which they started badly, this time Maccabi looked very good in the first quarter, controlled the game and was on the way to a significant gap, but Partizan fought, did not let the yellows run away and managed to close the first quarter with a 4-point deficit, and the half with only a point behind.
Partizan managed to turn the game around at the start of the fourth quarter with a significant run, with Maccabi unable to close the gap until the end, mainly due to poor defensive ability.
Wade Baldwin led the Maccabi scorers with 23 points and 7 assists, Bonzie Colson added 17, Alex Poithers 16, and Darren Hilliard 14. Roman Sorkin also had a good offensive game with 10 points.
The one missing from the list was Lorenzo Brown with 8 points in a weak game.
"We controlled the game for three quarters, in the last quarter the game got away from us, in defense. It's a shame, we were here, but we look forward, we have an important game in the first," Sorkin said at the end.
Alex Poithers added: "Tough game. I think that the energy level was great the whole game, we had trouble playing our game throughout, at the beginning of the fourth quarter we fell for a few minutes and they ran away with the advantage and kept it until the end."
Maccabi never stops absorbing.
Sorkin (photo: official website, Dragana Stjepanović)
2. At the end of eight Euroleague rounds, Maccabi Tel Aviv ranks 16th out of 18 in factory defense, conceding 85 points on average per evening and only Asconia and Panathinaikos conceding a little more.
In the away games, Maccabi has scored an average of 99.3 points so far, with the defeat in Baskonia of course raising the average, but also in the other two games, the defense of the Yellows was far from impressive, including last night.
In Belgrade, even in the team's best first quarter, Maccabi conceded 22 points, and out of 12 away quarters this season, they conceded less than 20 points only once.
For comparison, in the home games Maccabi's situation is much better - the Yellows receive 76.4 points, and out of the last 12 quarters at home, in seven they held the opponent to less than 20 points.
"There is no doubt that away games in the Euroleague are decided by defense, and if we are not able to stop an opponent on a reasonable score, we will not win games," said one of the Maccabi players at the end, "unlike what we saw against Basconia, there was no lack of effort, and unlike what we saw against Fenerbahce In the first round, there weren't too many problems of lack of coordination. We have structural defensive problems within the current squad, and it won't be easy for us to deal with them throughout the season."
One of the main problems of the yellows all season is the rebound defense, when last night Maccabi again allowed Partizan to take 11 rebounds out of the 27 that fell under their basket.
On the other side, Maccabi took 8 of 30 rebounds under the Partizan basket.
"When you allow the opponent to take more than a third of the rebounds, it is far too much," said the club, "we talk and work on it training after training week after week, without success."
Despite the defensive problems, the one who is considered the best guard on Maccabi's staff, and who was brought to the team on the basis of a defensive player, Austin Hollins, did not step on the floor at all last night, "This is my decision, we love Austin, and there is nothing more to add to that," he said Ketch in response to his decision.
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Too much credit?
Brown (photo: official website, Dragana Stjepanović)
3. The game in Belgrade was Lorenzo Brown's weakest in the yellow uniform.
The team's leading guard finished with 8 points, 5 assists and 4 turnovers, with the most significant statistic regarding him in this game being the amount of minutes.
Brown played the most in Maccabi, almost 35 minutes, and all this in a game in which he simply did not perform after the first quarter.
Maccabi's other two guards, aside from Wade Baldwin, Jaylen Adams and John DiBartholomew, played a little more than 12 minutes together and made two shots, with all the burden of a particularly busy week falling on Brown and Baldwin, who performed well for the game except for shooting from beyond the arc .
During the fourth quarter, Ketsch brought Adams off the bench to replace Brown, but at the last moment chose to continue with his quarterback.
"There is nothing to talk about, Lorenzo had a weak evening," said one of the club's people from Belgrade, "No one will blame the loss on him because he is human and everyone has evenings like that. If he played too much? Maybe, but that is the coach's decision."
The ex punished, Maccabi has no regrets.
Lasor in front of Coulson (photo: official website, Dragana Stjepanović)
4. Two exes of Maccabi Tel Aviv were last night on the floor in Belgrade and another player with a connection to the Yellows, Yam Madar who played for the city rival Hapoel Tel Aviv.
While Mader had a solid game with 8 points, and James Nunley was mediocre with 6 points, Matthias Lasor had 16 points and 8 rebounds, including 7 offensive rebounds, in another one of his impressive performances of the season.
"He was exceptional, we didn't find solutions for him," Maccabi admitted at the end, "he progressed a lot and became one of the best interior players in the factory."
Despite his excellent game and the great season the Frenchman is having, Maccabi continue to claim that the decision to release him last season was not a mistake.
The Yellows brought Lessor at the start of the season for only two months, while Ante Zizic was injured, and his matchup with Croatian and Jaylen Reynolds was such that the team could not play with two of them together, "at the end of having three centers on one team, when only one can Playing at a given time on the floor is not a correct decision."
Will all senior foreigners register for the derby?
Baldwin (photo: official website, Dragana Stjepanović)
5. Unlike some of the away games this season, in which Maccabi returns straight after the game to Israel, this time the team will return to Israel only today, after a night's sleep in Belgrade, and the team will hold a light training ahead of the derby that will be held tomorrow (9:00 p.m.).
A video meeting is also expected where they will go over the mistakes from the last game, watch the game against Hapoel from the Winner Cup again and try to prepare in the best way possible for the opponent.
The main question ahead of the derby is whether some of the team's prominent foreign players, Brown, Baldwin and Poithers, will get a rest in the important game, or whether Maccabi will continue to wear them down for the rest of the significant week they have, during which they will meet Olympiakos at home and Red Star Belgrade away.
"We have to recover, we'll take it day by day, we'll look at the next game, then the game after that, we can't think too far ahead, we've got a tough game in the derby and we're only looking at it," Poythers said.
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basketball
Super League
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Maccabi Tel Aviv in basketball
