Maccabi Tel Aviv will go up tonight (Tuesday, 21:15, live on 5SPORT) for its biggest game of the season: game number 5 in the quarter-final series once morest Panathinaikos. A win would send the Yellows into the Euroleague Final Four for the first time in 10 years, while a loss would end their European season at the same stage as last season.
Maccabi Tel Aviv landed in Athens yesterday in the evening and settled in a hotel in the city center. The team held the final training session in Tel Aviv, and it will arrive in Ouaka during the day for shooting practice. John DiBartholomeo is expected to be fit, but the one who will be sorely missed by Maccabi is Wade Baldwin, who took off with the rest of his teammates to Greece, but will not be able to play due to the repeated hamstring injury. “Everyone needs to step up, because there is a big vacuum that needs to be filled,” said James Webb. “Everyone has to do something more, another extra, because Wade is a very important player for us and we will have to find a way to win without him.”
Maccabi Tel Aviv is aware of the fact that the task tonight will be more difficult not only due to the absence of Baldwin, but also in light of Pau’s home advantage. Over 18 thousand fans will fill the Huaca tonight and provide a particularly warm atmosphere for their team. On the other hand, Maccabi believes that if the game is close, the pressure will shift to the green side. “There might be more pressure on them because it’s their home court, but we’ve also had pressure throughout the season to take advantage of every game, so it’s two-sided,” Webb added.
Maccabi Tel Aviv still carries with it the feeling of missing out on Game 4, a victory in which would have lifted them to the Final Four. Tonight, according to all the bookies, it will be an underdog – especially in light of the statistic that no team in Euroleague history has won Game 5 on the road on 19 previous occasions. Maccabi was in the same position last season, when they lost the fifth game to Monaco – and the team believes that this is an experience that can give them some kind of advance heading into the evening.
At the tactical level, the professional team focused quite a bit on the pair of guards, Kostas Sloukas and Kendrick Nan, with the aim of making it as difficult as possible for them, offensively and defensively. Slokas was the most significant difference between Game 3 and Game 4 in Belgrade, and Maccabi understands that he is one of the main keys that stand between them and the Final Four. “They created a lot of second chances in the previous game, it’s clear to us that we need to be more focused on defense,” Webb added. “We need to slow down Slokas and Nan, not let Mathias Sur get into situations where he is comfortable in the paint area. We made some adjustments and I hope it will work.’
This game, as I remember, was supposed to take place on Wednesday, but was brought forward a day due to the request of the Greek broadcasting franchisee who did not agree that the 5 games of Pau and Olympiakos ( once morest Barcelona) would take place on the same day. The game between Barcelona and Olympiakos must take place on Wednesday due to the Spanish team’s venue constraints, therefore the meeting between Panathinaikos and Maccabi Tel Aviv was moved from its original date and brought forward by a day. Maccabi wanted to play at an earlier time, but due to the fact that the relations between the clubs have been shaky since the beginning of the series, this did not happen.
