Valencia Basket- Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv post-game quotes: Jaume Ponsarnau

20/11/2020

"We played a first half, I think, with very good intentions, having the feeling that we had initiative, offensively and defensively. But Maccabi is a team that sticks to the games really well, and with its rebounds, second-chance points and steals, stayed in the game. In the second half, they started at a very high level on defense, very high. The game was very tough and they were playing really good defense. They found the way to defend 'Dubi' [Bojan Dubljevic]'s passes to the open men and that made us feel really uncomfortable. We were looking for our game and couldn't find it. There was a very critical moment in the fourth quarter in which we were blocked on offense, but looked like we were well on defense, and then Wilbekin showed up with all the special plays they have for him, as he is a talented player that was inspired. He changed the game dramatically. The team had faith and conviction, and had fresh air, physically speaking, due to a timeout we called, and came off it without Klemen [Prepelic] and Dubi on the floor. It was a risk, but that allowed them to have energy in the end, as they had played many minutes in this game, and they were key. Klemen drew attention on offense and Dubi played excellent defense, along with Sam, on the final play. It was absolutely critical. It was heads or tails. It looks like it was going to be tails, but it turned out to be heads"


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