The Spaniard side built a 57-30 lead that sent the visitors to the ropes in the second quarter
Valencia used a nearly perfect first half to dominate Jerusalem
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Valencia Basket enjoyed another successful BKT EuroCup night after defeating the visiting Hapoel Bank Yahav Jerusalem 96-83, confirming they are the team to beat in Group B. With this win, Valencia goes to 9-0 – still with a game less than its opponents – and continues to be the best offensive team in the competition.
Another example of this was the first half, and especially the first 18 minutes of the game. At that moment, Valencia was dominating 57-30 after punishing Jerusalem with a 20-0 run in the space of 5 minutes.
To that point, the Spanish team had already converted 11 three-pointers coming from six different players and had also provided 11 assists in what seemed to be a prelude of another three-digit scoring night for Valencia.
The blowout was also represented by an absolute dominance of the stat sheet, with Valencia out rebounding Hapoel 20-15 and recording a 73 PIR against the visitors’ 33.
“We work hard every day. So it's just showing the hard work we put in every day,” affirmed Chris Jones right after the game. “We just gotta keep going and don't relax, you know, like I say just keep playing hard and keep winning as many games as we can."
But despite that big advantage, Valencia had to fight hard to prevent Jerusalem from getting close, as the visitors managed to reduce the distance to 10 points, both in the third and the fourth quarters.
“We are living in the present, we are not thinking in the future, and today, for example, we lost the second half,” regretted Valencia head coach Pedro Martinez when asked about the expectations a perfect record so far can build.
“We didn't share the ball in the right direction in the second half. Every game is different and today the first half was in one way, and the second was another. [...] We respect Hapoel very much, they are the best defense in the EuroCup, they play very hard and we had some problems adjusting, especially in the second half, to their defense.”
Hapoel won the last two quarters of the game and even got within 89-79 with 2:50 to play, showing great pride and putting in a tremendous effort to come back. But Valencia came back to the basics, to the things that had worked better so far, which was the three-point shooting and giving the ball to Chris Jones, who finished with 20 points and 5 treys to lead his team. He showed up with his fifth to make it 92-73, right before Matt Costello closed the outcome from the free-throw line.
“[We] just stuck to what we do,” he said to explain how his team showed personality when Hapoel got close. “Not really losing our composure. Basketball is a game of runs. They made a run, but we were able to slow them down and continue doing what we did and we finished the game pretty strong.”