The visitors bounced back from a slow start to ruin Hapoel’s return party
Zalgiris ‘outhustles’ Hapoel in commanding road outing
Informes de partidos
3 Min lectura
Regular Season
Round 19 of 38
Regular Season
Hapoel IBI Tel AvivHTA
8093
Zalgiris KaunasZAL
Overview
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Tuesday night was a special one for Hapoel IBI Tel Aviv, which returned to Menora Mivtachim Arena for its first-ever EuroLeague game in the city. Fans packed the stands and, in their bid to push their team to what would have been a historic victory, they created a festive atmosphere that provided the hosts with a boost of energy in the opening stages.
Yet, Zalgiris Kaunas had different ideas.
Heading into the clash following an 85-92 home loss to Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens, the Lithuanian side was aware that a victory away at the league leader would be the ideal manner to get back to winning ways.
Energized by the crowd, Hapoel dominated in the first quarter and took a 25-18 lead into the second. However, a slow start to the game was followed by back-to-back quarters in which Zalgiris’s defense asphyxiated one of the best offenses in the competition. The visitors held Hapoel to 15 points in the second and just 13 in the third, securing a 53-63 cushion heading into the fourth.
“I think we played pretty good defense in the second and third quarter towards a lot of what we decided before the game,” Zalgiris head coach Tomas Masiulis told EuroLeague TV. “Some shots that we gave, they did score, but I think that defense was the key.”
With Vasilije Micic sidelined through injury, Hapoel leaned on the team's top scorer Elijah Bryant, but Zalgiris was having none of this. The 30-year-old guard may have ended the game on 14 points, but he managed to score just 5 in the first three quarters.
“[Ish] Wainright scored 3 three-point shots, [Johnathan] Motley scored 2 three-point shots, so this was my risk,” Masiulis stressed in the post-game press conference. “If they are scoring, that means that somebody else is not scoring. One of our ideas was to risk shots from them but not to allow their main player, Elijah, to feel the game.”
Masiulis’s plan worked to perfection, as Bryant was a non-factor for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, Moses Wright provided the spark on the other end with back-to-back dunks in the third, as a 2-13 run allowed the visitors to establish a double-digit lead.
Nigel Williams-Goss made some clutch buckets, netting 10 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter. Following his poorest outing of the season in the game against Panathinaikos, Sylvain Francisco was instrumental with 8 assists, while Azuolas Tubelis set the tone by grabbing a team-high 8 rebounds.
In fact, Zalgiris outrebounded Hapoel 21-40, forcing head coach Dimitris Itoudis to admit that the visitors “outhustled” his team. Yet according to Williams-Goss, his team’s consistency is what led to the 80-93 triumph.
“Just playing for 40 minutes,” he told EuroLeague TV. “There’s been a lot of times this year where we played really well for 20 minutes, 25 minutes and then we left 15 minutes to get away. So, our challenge was putting those full 40 minutes together and we did that against a really good team today. So I’m super proud of the win.”
Having celebrated its fourth road victory this term, Zalgiris is scheduled to open the upcoming double-round week with a game away at Virtus Bologna. And with its confidence sky-high after a commanding display in Tel Aviv, Masiulis’s players will look to open 2026 with another bang.
