With just five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and the JDS Lions down 42-30 to the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy Cougars, senior Gila Safra takes a three-pointer and swishes it, sending the crowd into a frenzy and bringing the Lions within 10 points. Despite losing their previous game to Berman, Safra felt optimistic about a victory heading into their rematch on Jan. 10.
“Even though we were coming off a loss to them, I had confidence because the last game was close, and I know we didn’t play to our full potential, so I was excited to get revenge for this game,” said Safra.
However, the result of the rivalry game was the same as the first meeting, as the Cougars won by a score of 54-35. A large part of Berman’s victory was due to their full-court press defense, which the Lions struggled with offensively. Berman generated 19 steals as opposed to the Lions’ 8, and Berman was able to capitalize on the Lions’ turnovers with fastbreak layups.
While Berman led 13-6 in the first half, the Lions used a late 11-0 run in the second quarter to claw back into the game, tying the game 25-25 at halftime. After many three-point shots from Berman in the fourth quarter, the Lions found themselves down 50-34 with three minutes left in the game and were unable to come back.
The Lions were without two of their starters from the first Berman game due to injury: senior Ella Longman and junior Yarden Wilkenfeld. Wilkenfeld found sitting on the bench a frustrating experience during the game.
“You’re seeing what’s going well, but also what’s not going well, and you want to run out to the court and fix it,” Wilkenfeld said. “You have to communicate with your team so they can fix it, and the communication wasn’t always working on Saturday night, so that was frustrating.”
One reason JDS lost to Berman earlier in this season was due to the Lions’ passivity on offense, and Athletic Director and head coach Becky Silberman wanted a stronger performance in their second matchup.
“In practice this week, we focused a lot on offensive aggressiveness,” said Silberman. “We ran some offensive sets where we’d put a sixth defender on defense to see how they’d handle that pressure, and we worked on our fast break transitions because we had no fastbreaks in the last game.”
While the result was not what Silberman wanted, she emphasized to her team after the game that the loss is no different than playing another team, and she believes her team’s mindset needs to change to beat Berman if there is a potential third game.
“I have a feeling we’ll play them again, and right now it’s all about attitude, listening and basketball IQ,” Silberman said. “These things are not skill-related, and we need to fix them. We need to go in with a better attitude, and they need to go in thinking they can win.”
As one of the Lions’ leading scorers in this game with 12 points, Safra thought she improved in the mental aspect of this game, and her confident play helped generate more points for the Lions.
Even though this potentially was Safra’s last rivalry game against Berman, she maintained a positive outlook on this game and the rest of the season, and she looks forward to potentially seeing Berman in the playoffs.
“Skill-wise, a lot of things were better than the last Berman game, and we’re really looking forward to hopefully seeing them in the championship,” Safra said. “But, we have to believe as a team that it’s all up from this point.”
