Three minutes of falling were enough last night (Wednesday) to complicate Hapoel Holon and remove it from the ticket to the top 16. The Purples were close to Galatasaray in Istanbul, but allowed their opponent to run to 3:12 during the fourth quarter – from 62:64 to 65:76 – And instead of fighting for a victory that might secure them the first place in Group C, they suffered a double loss; Both went down defeated, and also lost the internal advantage they had from the previous game in Israel. The Holonites won in Israel 73:82, and lost yesterday 88:75.
Only the team that wins the head of the house will automatically qualify for the next stage, and Gala took an important step on the way there. Holon will hope for her trip, and if she doesn’t arrive – she will try to continue her journey through the playin. Here too, the position has a lot of meaning: the second place, as opposed to the third, will give the team a home advantage in the best-of-three series.
There are two rounds left in the cup, with Galatasaray and Holon holding a 1:3 balance, followed by Philo Ostend and Legia Warsaw with 3:1 each. The national champions will host the Poles in two weeks, and two weeks later they will go to the lockout round in Belgium, where one victory will guarantee them at least second place.
“We lost the margin, and it’s a big disappointment for us,” admitted Freddie Bourdion, who scored 11 points. We need to improve in defense. For three quarters we were at the same level as our opponent, and even better, and the last quarter was critical.”
“We came to win, and if we don’t succeed – at least lose by less than nine points,” said coach Guy Goodes. “We failed in both tasks. Our main problem was in the defense in the second and fourth quarters, when in each they scored 28 points. Galatasaray did the right things at the end.”
The star of the game is well known to Holon. Ex-Maccabi Tel Aviv, Angelo Cloiaro, finished with a double-double of 18 points and 10 rebounds, and stood out mainly in the last quarter (9 and 4 respectively). “We suffered from too many ups and downs. We played great throughout most of the game, but we also had some really bad minutes, and we need to work on that,” said the forward.
Galatasaray now faces a derby against Fenerbahçe, which will be especially spicy in light of the identity of the coaches: Andreas Pistioulis, who was Dimitris Itoudis’s assistant for many years, will meet him for the first time as an opponent in the Turkish league.