Basketball

Rishon will return to the Premier League after three years in the Leumit League, and many of the players will follow the club up to the top division, while Drucker is expected to be back as well.

Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Tamir Blatt scored the final nine points for his team in a 91-88 victory on their home court at Yad Eliyahu.

Team effort powers yellow-and-blue’s comeback • Reds eye adjustments in best-of-3 finals

Maccabi Rishon Lezion defeated Hapoel Eilat 92-87 to knot up the Leumit Final series at 2-2 and send it to a winner-take-all fifth game down south by the Red Sea.

While the capital city Reds won’t be favored, they certainly will be coming into Yad Eliyahu for Game 1 with a chip on their shoulders and with something to prove.

Raver chose to enlist in the IDF's Yahalom unit as a combat engineer, though he could have continued playing basketball professionally.

Harper punctuates furious rally with game-winning 3 • Reds to face Mac Tel Aviv in finals

“Jerusalem was the better team,” Dimitrios Itoudis said. “We won three quarters, but the second quarter was a disaster with bad shots, and we gave up 29 points."

“I think overall I really liked the way we played,” Oded Katash said. “We didn’t start as we wanted to, but that was to be expected after a two-week break.

Marcus Foster, Timor, and Blakeney closed the gap in the final frame to tie the game up at 82-82 with just under two minutes remaining in regulation time.

Kaplan’s team was able to come away with the pivotal victory with a gutsy performance by MVP Iftach Ziv.