By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Maccabi has a season full of ups and downs playing its home games at Belgrade and most recently replacing Wenyen Gabriel with Trevion Williams who had 12 points with his new team.
However, on their last EuroLeague game for 2024, the Israelis managed to get an unexpected win against Zalgiris Kaunas with the final score being 95-78.
Jaylen Hoard with 23 points was impressive, Rokas Jokubaitis with 18 points didn’t have any pity for his old team and Roman Sorkin added also 18 points.
“I liked the team’s response to the difficult week we had – with tough losses. We responded in the right way, I told the players that I liked the body language and energy. We needed this victory. It’s really hard to keep up the energy, almost impossible. We don’t look for excuses, that’s why I’m really pleased with how we played,” Maccabi‘s head coach Oded Kattash said after the game.
Zalgiris got 15 points from Deividas Sirvydis – 14 of them in the first half – and 15 plus nine assists by Sylvain Fransisco, while Lonnie Walker who pretty much changed the outlook of the team after his arrival had also 14 points but on 1/10 threes.
Thanks to this result Maccabi has a 5-13 record and can still hope for a miracle in the second half of the season, while Zalgiris dropped to 10-8 in a tie with Efes between the 7th and the 8th position.
Maccabi firing at all cylinders
It was obvious from the first quarter that Maccabi meant business, leading 26-16 with Hoard already having 10 points before Fransisco with a three, trimming the point difference to seven points (26-19) at the end of the period.
Zalgiris managed to make it a five-point game (26-21), but Maccabi didn’t stop, pushing the lead first to 13 (35-22) and then to 17 points (43-26) with Jokubaitis taking over.
The guests closed halftime down by 12 (50-38) thanks to a buzzer-beating by Sirvydis, however, they couldn’t change the momentum.
Maccabi led again by 17 (67-50), entered the last period with a score of 71-56, and after four minutes, a shot by Jokubaitis pushed their advantage to 20 points (80-60).
Photo credit: EuroLeague