Hapoel Tel Aviv Wins Cagliari Tournament Ahead of Super Cup Derby

Hapoel Tel Aviv will land in Israel today (Monday) for the first time this season for a few days before returning to Bulgaria for the start of their EuroLeague campaign. The Reds will arrive in a full squad, and on Thursday they will play in the Super Cup against Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Last night, Hapoel won the Cagliari tournament with a 77:85 victory over Bayern Munich in the final game. Hapoel achieved this despite playing without the sick Vasa Micić and Elijah Bryant, who was given a rest.

"We are suffering from a bit of sickness and load management issues, but overall we are working hard. We will come very aggressive and very focused to fight and bring our fans great joy," said coach Dimitris Itoudis about his team's situation ahead of the Super Cup.

"They say results don't matter in preparation games, but you always play to win, so we are glad we reacted. We played against Roma in an inappropriate way, so we watched the game again, analyzed what we did wrong and what needed to change - and the players reacted and came with a different attitude, and that's what I appreciate the most from the game against Bayern. We played against a serious EuroLeague team, it was a good performance for us - we were the better team on the court and won the tournament."

Amir Coffey, who is steadily improving within Itoudis' system, said after the victory over Bayern: "It feels good to finish with 6-6 in the preseason. I feel we built good momentum and worked on the things we needed to, so we are definitely ready for what's next. Everyone explained to me how important the derby is, everyone is excited and we will be as ready as possible. We can be satisfied with how we looked in the preparation games, we watched a lot of video and polished our team play, so I'm sure we are ready for the first official game."