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Natanya Top Hapoel
Lior Klinger
,12/01/2008 |
There were two things to note from this game. One, Erica White is a player. Two, Hapoel can't keep playing with this lineup. Hapoel looked good in the first half but Natanya got it together in the 2nd half and knew how to break away despite a poor performance.
Hapoel Tel Aviv 58 – Elizur Maccabi Natanya 74
" We still have a long way to go. This league is very good, lots of good players", Erica White said after her 3rd game in Israel, and first win. "I think if we become better defensively, we can be pretty good. We did a good job on defense tonight, if we do that we can compete", she continued. "In previous games we ran out of gas in the 2nd half, tonight we played tough in the 3rd and had enough left in the 4th, that was the difference for us", White summed up. As for the losing side, all you can say is that it's becoming sad coming to Hapoel games. You can't keep playing with 5.5 players.
Both teams couldn't hit early in the game. White scored her team's first four on drives, and Natasha Brackett only joined her four minutes in, 6 – 3. Hapoel answered with an 8 – 0 run as Alex Anderson & Shahar Alterman hit threes, timeout Natanya, 11 – 6. Hapoel still led 15 – 10 as Anderson and Tierre Willson scored, but they had too many turnovers and allowed Natanya to tie it before Wilson sealed the quarter with a three. Natanya, in a poor first quarter other than White who scored nine, didn't make a single substitution.
Diamond Rogers and Wilson increased the lead to 22 – 17 but Natanya completely dominated the boards on both ends and got some points in transition to retake the lead, 23- 22. Other than throwing it inside to Tamara Ransburg and White's penetrations, nothing was working for Natanya and they didn’t play to those options enough. Rogers had a great quarter and lifted Hapoel to a 34 – 32 lead, but Ransburg turned a missed three to a three point play and White hit another layup to give the visitors a 37 – 34 halftime lead.
Wilson nailed a three to tie it at 39 but Taly Noy answered with a three for Natanya, and the visitors began sharing the ball more. Hapoel looked tired, stuck and pretty frustrated. Natanya could've taken advantage of that to finish the game off, but led just 54 – 45 after three.
Alterman hit a three and Rogers added a three point play to cut it to 51 – 60 with 6:30 left. The gap was just 10 with 3:30 to go but it was obvious Hapoel have no way of finding the energy to come back. Natanya increased the lead till the buzzer.
For Natanya:
Tamara Ransburg 19 pts, 15 rebs
Erica White 17 pts, 11 rebs, 7 ast, 4 stl
Natasha Brackett 14 pts
Sarit Arbel 11 pts
Taly Noy 6 pts
Ornit Shwartz 5 pts
Ela Karni 2 pts
For Hapoel:
Tierre Willson 20 pts, 9 TOs
Diamond Rogers 17 pts, 8 TOs
Alex Anderson 12 pts
Shahar Alterman 9 pts
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