The effervescent Bryant did the lion’s share of his talking on the court and acknowledged postgame that Hapoel was forced to dig deep to turn the tide, as ASVEL looked capable of staging an upset for three and a half quarters of the rugged matchup.
“We got stops in the second half against a very talented ASVEL team,” said Bryant. ”Our defense set the tone and we now have to focus on getting better every single day.”
Glynn Watson paced ASVEL on 17 points and Shaquille Harrison added 14, but the home team didn’t have enough left in the tank for a grueling climax to the game as Hapoel closed shop. The French side’s head coach Pierric Poupet was disappointed but also proud of his men’s die-hard attitude which kept Hapoel in check for much of the contest.
“They were better than us and showed more talent in the end,” Poupet said. “It’s killing us to lose like this hut overall we showed a lot of good things, so heads up and keep working for the next game coming up.”