Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv came back to Pionir Arena in Beograd but unlike the happy memories from 29 years ago, when the club won it's first European title, this time the Yellow and Blue lost 103-91 to Partizan.
The only player who stepped up in Maccabi was Simas Jasaitis who scored 27 points, and Jaime Arnold as well came off the bench to contribute some points. The biggest problem of Maccabi was defense, where for the second time in a row in the Euroleague the team recieved more than 100 points.
The Serb shooters had no mercy for the visitors (13/21) and gave each of the 6,000 local fans every reason to cheer and sing with no stopping.
Vujcic scored a three pointer with the last buzzer of the first quarter to make it just 21-19 for the locals, but in the second quarter Partizan took off to a 49-42 lead at half time.
Predrag Drobnjak was all over the place in the third quarter and the arrows behind the arc kept sinking in. Partizan climbed to a 71-53 lead, and Maccabi only managed to cut the difference a little until the final buzzer.
Coach Spahija: "A lot of things worked bad, especially on defense. We made some very bad deceision and I apologize to the fans for our performance. We'll have to improve our game.
Maccabi: Jasaitis 27, Arnold 18, Vujcic 11, Sharp 9, Buford 9, Bynum 6, Eliyahu 5, Felix 4, Halperin 2
Partizan: Drobnjak 23, Cummings 19, Bogdanovic 17, Perovic 13, Tripkovic 11, Tepic 10, Kecman 4, Pekovic 4