After suffering yet another loss in the Israeli Basketball League against Bnei Herzliya yesterday, Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv's head coach Ioannis Sfairopoulos had a lot of words to say about the current situation of the club's schedule.
Maccabi Tel Aviv / Schedule
Monaco Basket
Maccabi Tel Aviv
Bitci Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz"It is obvious that the result was caused by the energy we did not have, as this was the 3rd game in 5 days, and we played less than 48 hours ago," the coach noted. Maccabi played a Euroleague match against AS Monaco on December 29th, which was followed by local games against Hapoel Jerusalem and Bnei Herzliya on January 1st and January 3rd accordingly.
The Greek specialist threw shade at the league's administration in his post-game interview. "We had a promise that we would not play back-to-back games by the league administration," Sfairopoulos noted. "We believe in all the players and we felt like they threw us in the Colosseum with lions and tigers without energy and without another day to play the game."
"We have played a lot of games this season and we had to play against a team that only played once a week. It seemed like we ran out of fuel when we only scored 11 points in the last quarter," the Greek coach expressed.
"The players tried and missed many open shots. We were close and we tried to stay in the game and you saw the many open shots we missed. We had open shots and missed them, we just did not have the legs to shoot," Sfairopoulos was blunt.
Maccabi will now face Bitci Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz in the Euroleague on Thursday, hoping to snap their 8-game losing streak. The Israeli club sits 13th in the most prestigious European tournament's standings with 7 wins and 11 losses.
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