The Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team defeated the Real Madrid team of Spain 110-100 in a crucial game last Thursday night in Tel Aviv before a sell-out crowd of 10,000-plus at Yod Eliyahu. The win automatically placed the Israeli team in the European Cup Final Championship series, which will take place March 27 in Berlin against Real Madrid. In order to qualify for the European Cup Championship Game, the Maccabi five had to defeat the visitors from Spain by two points, having lost to them in a previous game in Spain by one tally.
The last time a Maccabi team played on a European Cup Championship final in 1977, they won the title and the excitement in Tel Aviv was so wide-spread that on that particular evening Premier Yitzhak Robin tried to announced his resignation but could not get on the air before an appreciable audience and postponed his announcement until the following day.
The heros of last Thursday evening against Peal Madrid were Mickey Berkowitz, who returned to the Maccabi lineup after recovering from an ankle injury, who was the leading scorer in the contest with a total of 29 points, and Lou Silver, former Harvard University star, now a dual citizen, who came up with 27 vital points.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
