By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Lorenzo Brown led the way with 22 points, Wade Baldwin scored 14 and Josh Nebo added 13 for Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv on the way to the easy 85-74 win.
The hosts had everything under control for most of the game, keeping Panathinaikos at a distance.
Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv head coach Oded Kattash – who happens also to be a former Panathinaikos coach- didn’t hide his satisfaction: “I have to say that I am really happy about the result. We succeeded to pull this one out. In some minutes, it wasn’t pretty. In the end, once we locked in on defense and controlled the defensive rebounds and got some easy points in transition, which is how we want to play”.
To be exact after a close first half with Maccabi leading by five (47-42), Panathinaikos trailed by 12 (65-53) in the third period.
The last quarter started with Maccabi having a ten-point advantage (69-59) which quickly was extended to 14 (74-60).
“It was very important for us to be strong inside because they have a very good frontcourt, so the focus today was to bring our A game”, Josh Nebo explained. “In the second half, we stayed focused. We were up by 5 points at halftime and I feel like we didn’t get comfortable. We stayed locked in and made adjustments.”
Panathinaikos made one more run to make it a six-point game (76-70), but that was the best the guests could do.
Panathinaikos Athens head coach Dejan Radonjic admitted that his team should have been more careful in details: “For us, the last minutes in the second quarter were really bad defensively with a lot of bad decisions. We tried to be competitive in the second half. The defense was better than the first half. But the 16 turnovers and 15 Maccabi offensive rebounds made it too tough to win here.”
Derrick Williams had 17 points for the losing side against his former team. Nate Wolters returned to action with 4 points and five assists, while newcomer Dwayne Bacon stayed in Athens and Andrew Andrews wasn’t used in the game.
Maccabi has a solid 4-1 start in the season, while Panathinaikos has a 1-4 record.