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At its own rhythm: Hapoel beats Gala
After their thrilling victory in the first round, Hapoel beat Galatasaray 85:70 in an away match at the Laktasi Hall in Bosnia, thus positioning themselves together with PAOK Thessaloniki at the head of the group
With the away loss to PAOK in the previous round, Hapoel finished the first round in the group stage of the Champions League with a positive record of 2:1. Today (Thursday), the Reds met Galatasaray at the Laktasi Hall in Bosnia, where they met the Turks in the preparatory Banja Luka tournament in September, but this time they beat them 85:70. Randolph, Carrington, and Ndour excelled and swept the Reds into the game with a spectacular offensive pace en route to victory. The previous game against the teams was dragged into overtime and ended in the most tense way possible when Speedy Smith's rise in the final minutes included two heroic three-pointers towards the end of the fourth quarter that tied the score, helping Hapoel achieve the important victory in the first round.
Dzikic in final instructions to his teamHapoel opens the game with Speedy Smith, Or Cornelius, Levi Randolph, Oz Blayzer, and Zach Hankins.
Galatasaray, the home team, started as such and pressed the Reds all over the court, but then Hapoel started to show its defensive capabilities under the command of Or Cornelius, who stole two balls in a row. Hankins faced Kabaca, who is much shorter than him, and therefore also functioned as Hapoel's goal man in the paint, at least until he committed his second foul and went down in Ndour's place in the tie at 9. Johnson, who entered Blayzer's place, gave many defensive elements and also contributed a lot to moving the ball with correct cuts to paint. Lemar and Carrington, who came in, brought an offensive boost to Hapoel and together with excellent defensive moves, gave it a 21:12 lead towards the end of the quarter. Galatasaray moved to zone defense in the last minutes and managed to reduce the difference—22:17—to Hapoel after 10 minutes of basketball.
Hapoel opened the second quarter with the same offensive flow that characterized it in the first quarter, and only a lack of concentration and luck from the FT line kept the difference relatively close. Chachashvili saw early minutes because of Hankins' foul trouble and did a nice defensive job on Jarel Martin. The Turks continued with their zone defense that took Hapoel off the pace, but it was Brynton Lemar who managed to break the defensive lines again and again. Chacha struggled at first against the European aggressiveness but slowly got into the rhythm with excellent moves against Kabaca, who went down with four fouls. Blayzer's small actions of offensive rebounding and extorting fouls with a lot of game IQ raised Hapoel for the first time to a double-digit lead, 2 minutes to the end of the quarter. Randolph's impressive personal move established Hapoel's record advantage at the end of the half - 45:30.
Randolph opened the second half, as he knows, with quality scoring moves as the offensive tempo on both sides picked up, along with both teams crossing the four-team foul threshold very early in the quarter. Hapoel lost a bit of concentration with turnovers and unnecessary fouls, and the Turks took advantage of the situation to get closer and reduce the Jerusalem advantage. Lemar and Carrington, who entered the game again, swept Hapoel forward at the end of the third quarter, giving the Reds a 63:47 advantage.
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Levi Randolph, scorer
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