Danny Franco, Hapoel: 'We picked it up defensively in the second half'

Hapoel Vegan Friendly Tel Aviv head coach Danny Franco:
"First of all, it was not a great game of ours but in the second half, we came out playing defense as we knew. We got 40 points in the first 20 minutes, we spoke about that at halftime and came back to receive only 20 points in the second half. Cannot go better than that, and we built our confidence on offense as well. Even on a bad shooting night, we came up with a good result
"I would like to thank Trento for great hospitality. I’ve been in Italy several times but never here. Italy is always beautiful and very nice, I like to thank the organization, before basketball and everything, for the conditions, and the chance to see the beautiful side city of Trento. For us, it was a mental game coming off a couple of big wins, with good atmosphere in the team. A great win can be good for confidence sometimes, but overconfidence is not good. Mentally I think we struggled a little bit in the first half, but we picked it up defensively in the second. That effort on defense helped us win in a game that we didn’t play our way on offense, with a lot of turnovers. Defensively we locked in as a team, and that helped us get this important win and go back home smiling."
Dolomiti Energia Trento head coach Emanuele Molin:
"I think we played pretty good the first two quarters, doing well what we were supposed to do, slowing down their transition and their shot selection. In the second half, we did not have any more energy to answer their power. We created a lot of good shots but we didn’t shoot well. When Hapoel got the lead, we went down and trashed all what we were doing."
Hapoel Vegan Friendly Tel Aviv center Chinanu Onuaku:
"We actually played defense [in the second half], we got stops, and it helped us getting in offense, getting easy buckets and have more flow on offense. [What we can still improve is] just our defense and team rebounding, that’s it. If we can do that, we can take it all the way."