Last season we witnessed the tightest ever race for the EuroLeague Playoffs. With two rounds to go there were dozens of potential scenarios with seven teams still racing for the last three playoff spots. Among those seven teams, none won its Round 29 game in a more dominant fashion to keep alive its playoff hopes than Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv. In the process of trashing visiting Herbalife Gran Canaria 90-55 and improving its regular-season record to 14-15, Maccabi set its EuroLeague single-game club record with 55 total rebounds, the highest rebounding mark in the league in four seasons and topping its old club record that was just six days old.

Ties the non-overtime record

Maccabi's 55 rebounds are tied for the fourth-most in the EuroLeague this century and tied for the most in a non-overtime game. All three rebounding performances ranked above the Israeli champs' total from that game are from games that went to overtime. Asseco Prokom Gdynia holds the competition record with 62 rebounds, which it amassed in an 88-95 overtime road win against Montepaschi Siena in December 2012. The only other time a team had 55 rebounds in a non-overtime game this century was Olympiacos Piraeus in its record 89-41 playoff win over Montepaschi in March 2011.

Team effort

Coach Ioannis Sfairopoulos dressed 11 players for the game and only Jeremy Pargo did not collect and rebounds. Every other player not only played at least 12 minutes, but captured multiple rebounds, too. Johnny O'Bryant and Tarik Black pulled down 8 rebounds apiece, Alex Tyus had 6, while Michael Roll, Deni Avdija and Yovel Zoosman grabbed 5 boards each. Maccabi also had 18 offensive rebounds that game, which was tied for the sixth-most in club history at the time, and had eight different players with at least 1 offensive rebound, too.

Setting the new mark

Interestingly, Maccabi came into the clash with Gran Canaria after a record-setting rebounding night when it pulled down 54 in a road win against Khimki Moscow Region. By grabbing 55 rebounds in this contest, Maccabi had a total of 109 rebounds in two games, setting a new EuroLeague record for the most rebounds in back-to-back games by a single team this century. Also, with this performance, Maccabi became the first team to have three games with 50 or more rebounds in a single season. Maccabi ranked second in rebounding for the 2018-19 season with 36.3 per game, behind only Real Madrid's 36.9. The team eventually came 7 rebounds short of finishing as the league leader.

It's Maccabi's thing

These types of rebounding performances don't happen often, but come more often when Maccabi is in question. There have been 36 times in the EuroLeague this century that a team has pulled down at least 50 rebounds and five of those were by Maccabi teams, which is tied for KIROLBET Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz for the most such games in the competition. The first time Maccabi had 50 rebounds was in January 2011 against Lottomatica Roma in a 41-point home win and the team improved its single-game record to 53 rebounds in November 2017 in a home win against Real Madrid. The first time Maccabi reached 50 rebounds last season was in a Round 11 road win over Darussafaka Istanbul, before pulling down 54 and then 55 in back-to-back weeks. Five games, five wins.