Since my last post we have played 3 games. Our first game was against Rishon Lezion. This is a veteran team in our league with proven players. They are also slightly aged so it was a team we could exploit on the break. We built up a decent lead going into the half and continued to hold the lead throughout the game. We ended up winning by about 10 points. Not too much suspense in this game. Just a solid win where we held a lead until the end. Up next was Galil. This team is very different from Rishon. They are all young, athletic, and can shoot the 3 ball. This is one of the teams we had beaten twice in the preseason. I think we may have gone into this game with a little bit of overconfidence. The game started out horrible for us and they seemed to be on fire while we were stumbling on offense. They built up a 14 point halftime lead and didn't stop in the 3rd quarter. The lead was built up to about 30 midway through the 4th quarter. One of their guards (Jeremy Pargo, Gonzaga) was unstoppable from long distance and taking the ball to the rim. Just a horrible game for us that we would like to forget. The team did not come to play and everything seemed to go wrong. We ended up losing by 35.. embarrassing. Finally our last game was against Holon. This is a team with some veterans and some young athletic players. It was our first time seeing them this year but it was a game we knew we had to win. We went into the half down by 5 points but responded big in the 3rd quarter by going on a huge run. We pushed the lead to about 18 points in the 4th quarter. However, they ended up chipping away at the lead late to scare us. They cut the lead to 2 points before we sealed the game and ended up winning by 7 points. I started all 3 of these games and got significant minutes except for in the Galil loss. My breakout game came against Holon where I had 18 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks and was named the game MVP by the media. It felt good to go out there and play well finally. It had been so frustrating not playing to my ability up to this point. I hope the trend will continue next week against Bnei HaSharon. This is a good team that we should be competing for playoff position with. A very important game that we need to win..
