Moshe Barda 11/02/2021 18:30
Tamir Blatt throws (Oren Ben Hakon)
The first game in the semifinals of the National Basketball Cup brings together Hapoel Jerusalem and Maccabi Rishon Lezion, two teams that are used to meeting each other in every possible setting in recent years.
In the last two years they have competed in knockout matches in both the National Cup and the Final Four: in the league the Oranges have won twice – including a dramatic 97: 100 from Adam Ariel’s three-pointer with the buzzer – while in the Cup the Reds were on top: 67:82 in the 2019 final and 78:90 In the semifinals last year.
This season they met in the Balkan league and each team won away, when in the last round the runner-up came back from a double-digit deficit and ousted the trophy holder from the factory. Both teams do not reach the game in optimal condition: Jerusalem opened the league with a balance of 0: 7, but since then it has been defeated in four of the last six rounds, Rishon LeZion has not been at its peak and in the last five rounds it has won only once.
First quarter:
Maccabi Rishon LeZion: Isaiah Taylor, Golan Gut, Noam Avivi, Daryl Monroe and Achilles Mitchell.
Hapoel Jerusalem: Tamir Blatt, Malcolm Hill, Jacoben Brown, Suleiman Braimo and Tyson Thomas.
The match opened when the team from the city of wine won the jump ball and also the first points in the game, when Golan Gut scored a smart three. Jerusalem also came on the board, after an accurate shot jump by Jacoben Brown. The Reds came out bursting when Tamir Blatt sent a great assist to Malcolm Hill, who squeezed a basket and an offense and completed a three-point move. Gutt tried again from outside the arc and hit, when Mitchell scored from the bottle in the counter-attack and raised his team to 5: 8.
