Austin Wiley’s double-double and relentless rebounding set the tone for a statement win in the Israeli capital
Jerusalem’s second-half surge crushes Manresa in 36-point rout
Game Report
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 12 of 18
Regular Season
group a
Hapoel Midtown JerusalemJLM
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BAXI ManresaMAN
group a
Overview
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Hapoel Midtown Jerusalem rode a ferocious second half and a suffocating third-quarter surge to a 105-69 blowout of Manresa on Tuesday night at Pais Arena, avenging its earlier loss in Spain and tightening its grip on first place in Group A. The hosts turned a tight, nervous first half into a runaway, winning their ninth straight game to improve to 10-2, while snapping Manresa’s three-game winning streak and dropping the Spanish side to 6-6.
For much of the first half, though, it looked nothing like a 36-point game. Austin Wiley set the tone early, scoring twice in a 12-2 first-quarter run that seemed to put Jerusalem in control. Manresa refused to go away, chipping back to 23-22 after 10 minutes. Pierre Oriola, Grant Golden and Kao Akobundu-Ehiogu all made key plays and the visitors nosed ahead. By halftime, Manresa had seized a 45-49 lead, having silenced the arena and flipped all of the early momentum.
The game’s defining stretch came shortly after the break. Manresa still led 50-53 when Yovel Zoosman ignited Jerusalem’s turnaround, pouring in 6 points during a stunning 13-0 run that transformed a 3-point deficit into a 63-53 advantage. That burst encapsulated everything head coach Yonatan Alon preaches about this team’s identity.
“When we play defense, good things happen to us,” he said afterward. “Obviously, we played both sides of the floor. I am really happy with how we showed up for the second half. This is how we make our life easy.” One defensive stop bled into the next, and suddenly Manresa, which did not score for nearly 4 minutes, couldn’t buy a clean look or protect the ball.
By the end of the third quarter, Jerusalem had outscored Manresa 27-8 in the period, turning a 4-point halftime deficit into a double-digit cushion that felt insurmountable. From there, the hosts only poured it on in the fourth, running the floor, hunting turnovers and letting the Pais Arena crowd carry them.
“It’s our focus on our principles. It’s not something special. It’s how we do things, not what we do,” Alon explained, summing up a half in which his team’s defensive habits choked off Manresa’s offense and fueled transition.
The box score told the same story. Jerusalem dominated the glass 43-32, with Wiley at the heart of that effort as he continued to justify his status as the EuroCup’s leading rebounder at 8.7 per game. The big man finished with 13 points and 10 rebounds and framed his performance in purely team-first terms.
“I just want to do whatever I can for our team to be successful,” Wiley said. “I know crashing the glass and being on the boards helps us win a lot, so I try to do that every game.”
Jerusalem turned that rebounding edge into repeated extra possessions and quick outlets that punished a tired Manresa defense.
Turnovers were even more brutal. Manresa coughed the ball up 20 times, while Jerusalem committed only 9. Those miscues translated into a 30-7 landslide in points off turnovers, a differential that essentially decided the game on its own.
Once Manresa started missing threes and losing control of the boards, there was no way back. Their head coach, Diego Ocampo, admitted as much: “In the third quarter, we didn’t have the energy and concentration that we needed. We have to play 40 minutes concentrated with a lot of physicality and we didn’t start the third quarter like that. We didn’t make three pointers, we turned the ball over a lot and we lost control of the rebounds. And Hapoel took advantage.”
Offensively, Cassius Winston orchestrated everything with poise and aggression. He led six Jerusalem scorers in double figures with 20 points. Justin Smith and Khadeen Carrington chipped in 15 points apiece, Jared Harper added 14 points and 7 assists, Zoosman matched him with 14 and Wiley’s double-double rounded out a perfectly balanced attack.
If the numbers told one part of the story, the crowd told the rest. The third-quarter run felt amplified by the wave of noise in Pais Arena, something Alon highlighted. “Our big advantage here in Jerusalem is that one run sometimes kills the game,” he said. “The fans lift you on a wave. That’s a major difference (playing at home).”
On Tuesday night, that wave carried Jerusalem all the way from a shaky first half to another emphatic statement at the top of Group A.
