“I think that the coaches and the staff prepared the game extraordinarily well,” Hezonja told EuroLeague TV. “I think that all of us, as a team, stepped forward. We managed to not make their [Hapoel’s] impact so big. Everybody was very serious and we deserved to win today.”
An 8-0 run late in the third quarter allowed Hapoel to grab a 58-52 cushion – Hapoel’s largest lead in the game. Yet, Real Madrid showed character and bounced back with a 0-8 surge to end the period before going on a 0-5 run to make it 58-65 early in the fourth.
“I think that we won the game there,” Scariolo stressed. “When they went 6 up, we didn’t panic and kept clear ideas of what we had to do, and we responded with a great run. From then on, it was still a good game, open and close at the same time, but we had gotten the confidence that we could respond to their runs.”