By Amy Samin
There's a sense of lost opportunity in Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv after the 80-72 loss to Fenerbahce Ulker, but they're looking ahead. Head coach Guy Goodes observed, "It was a hard game against a very good and tough team. They put on a run at the end, with a lineup of forwards. They did a lot of damage after we'd had a nearly perfect half, but we've learned a lot from that game. We need to play for forty minutes, not twenty-five. We sort of collapsed, and against their second lineup of all things. Their bench players came in with a lot of energy, and we started turning the ball over. It's kind of a wasted chance, but the series is just getting started. We put in a lot of effort, and now we need to look towards Game 2."
Team captain Yogev Ohayon, who put in a good game, added, "At the start of the game we were able to do some things that we couldn't do as the game went on. We didn't take advantage of the fact that they had four fouls in the fourth quarter. We'll look at the film from the game and see what we didn't do well. We proved to ourselves that we can beat them. We all feel we wasted the opportunity we had to win. It's not easy, but we've been in situations like this before. We'll go into the next game trusting in our coach, who prepared us well for this game, and we'll show effort for all four quarters
."
"We played well, but we missed a few shots in a row," said Jeremy Pargo. "It hurt us, but I'm sure we'll have another chance in the next game. We'll be focused on Thursday, and I hope we'll go home with a win."