\u201cWe really missed playing here,\u201d admitted forward Roman Sorkin, who powered his team\u2019s efforts with 13 points and 8 rebounds. \u201cEvery night we play here, it\u2019s amazing energy and an amazing atmosphere. We\u2019re happy to play here, and it just means more to us to play at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those views were echoed by Tamir Blatt, who scored all his 15 points from long range as he converted a personal best 5 of his 6 three-point attempts in an isolated example of offensive efficiency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe energy in the arena was unbelievable,\u201d said the playmaker. \u201cWe\u2019re blessed to have these fans pushing us, and we\u2019re enjoying this kind of atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fans can only do so much, of course, and coach Kattash emphasised the defensive work undertaken by his players.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat effort,\u201d Kattash noted. \u201cIn the second half, defensively we stepped up, and that was a team effort. It wasn\u2019t always nice, especially offensively \u2013 we could do better. But still, we were fighting, we stuck to the game plan and I like the effort. We had a specific game plan against Kostas Sloukas and we did a good job on him.\u201d<\/p>\n
The win keeps Maccabi hoping that it can recover from its terrible 2-8 start and climb all the way into the playoff places, but Kattash certainly wasn\u2019t getting carried away as he concluded: \u201cEvery game we have to keep improving and be better for our next challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are indeed many challenges ahead and Maccabi\u2019s chances of making the postseason are still slim, but if the kind of defensive effort displayed on Thursday night becomes a weekly habit, you never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe really missed playing here,\u201d admitted forward Roman Sorkin, who powered his team\u2019s efforts with 13 points and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-252613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}