Closer than that, Hapoel Holon could not have asked. 6 and a half minutes before the end, she still led by 17 points, 50:67, and seemed on the way to a convincing victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv and the final of the State Cup. But from that moment on the champion took control of the game, ran 5:22 and forced overtime, in which the players of Stefanos Dadas fell off their feet and surrendered 87:85 to those of Yannis Sapropoulos.
The story of the fourth quarter can be divided into two: the stalemate of Holon, which seemed rather bewildered for those final minutes, and the claims of all the team members about the lack of uniformity in the refereeing. “The referees killed us, there is no other way to say it,” the club said. “Blow CJ Harris over and over again and he doesn’t get whistles. Everyone saw Scotty Wilbkin’s steps in the basket that set up an overtime except for the referees. “It can’t be that in such an intense game we don’t get any whistles for the last 4 and a half minutes, it doesn’t make sense.”
There was a lot of anger in Holon at the end – Stefanos Dadas shouted in frustration in the locker room area at the end, when the chairman also Ethan Lanciano He expressed his displeasure with the judges when he tweeted sarcastically: “There were three other Israelis who excelled.” Dadas He himself tried to avoid harsh criticism of the referees, as he has often done this season, but still said at the press conference: “If we had received one offense, no more, in the last minutes – everything could have looked different. Automatically their defense was more careful and creative. “Less contact with us. The more the referees allowed the contact without offenses, the stronger Maccabi seemed to be.”
Even at the professional level, it is possible to divide Holon’s game into two: until Maccabi’s comeback, and from the moment the comeback began. Because until the final minutes, when Maccabi pressed the whole field, Holon was much better. “We did school for them for more than three quarters,” they said in Holon. “If we left them on 72 points, if they ran out of timeouts 7 minutes to go, if Yannis put both Hunter and Zizic on the bench for most of the last quarter – that means we took them out of their flow. Too bad for the minutes. The latter is a big miss. “
Dadas added: “The loss is definitely frustrating, but I’m proud of how we played and I’m sure the fans were proud of us too. Maccabi Tel Aviv knows us and knows exactly what our style is – and it was still very difficult for us to deal with us. I believe we will meet them sometime again at the end of the road, and I believe we will be ready. We have proven that we can deal with them. “
But after the impressive ability, Holon was caught with their pants down in the last seven minutes, and despite the difficult claims to judge – can certainly come up with arguments for itself for not being able to take advantage of a 17-point advantage so late in the game. “Admittedly I already thought our game, I did not see anything that could take away from us the victory,” he said Guy Pnini, Who was excellent with 17 points. “The game flowed, there were incredible energies and everything flowed. Out of nowhere we got some shock and unfortunately this time I am on the losing side.”
Dadas also shortened the rotation yesterday – five players got more than 31 minutes – and possibly in the closing minutes, it was in the back of his team. “We were drained, but usually in games like this the rotation is short, and whoever played felt good about himself,” Pnini added. “You could say that in the end we fell off our feet, in overtime we were really tired. The bottom line was we had to respond better to the pressure.”
