By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv grabbed their tenth victory in the Turkish Airlines Euroleague after beating Crvena Zvezda MTS Belgrade at home.
Neven Spahija highlighted defense as the main reason for tonight’s victory and how important was to get back to wins.
“Many times in this marathon it is most important to win the games and when you lose, like we lost the game against Olympiacos by 30, it is most important to come back, to recover, to keep thinking positive and to continue. That’s exactly what we did. This league is very tough, very competitive and we have to go game by game. We won the game through defense, especially in the first half. Except for some of the third quarter, everything else was good”, Spahija stated.
Pierre Jackson was Maccabi‘s brightest star tonight scoring 22 points and that didn’t surprise his coach. “We know Pierre. We know his character, he is the player who steps up when it is most important. He plays with confidence, he was an MVP tonight, right?“, said Spahija.
This was a third loss in a row for Crvena Zvezda. Their coach Dusan Alimpijevic pointed that their defensive awareness was below the standard.
“We didn’t control their transition and fast breaks in the first half, and also we didn’t control their offensive rebounds. Whenever we had a good result in the first half, we let down for a series, like I said from transition, especially. In the second half, we showed some character. That’s good, but it is not enough. So the rhythm is like this and we don’t have any advantage in this system”. We must go on and we will see. All the best to Maccabi and Coach Neven.” said Alimpijevic after the game.