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Illawarra have dismantled last year’s champions, the New Zealand Breakers, for the third time this season with an 87-69 win in the NBL heritage round.
The Hawks produced arguably their finest defensive performance of the season, applying plenty of pressure to the Breakers offence, leading to poor shots and a whopping 19 turnovers.
“I thought it was the best we’ve ever played defensively, against a terrific team but room for improvement,” a satisfied Rob Beveridge said.
“I thought it became a real grind, that was almost like a playoff game, our free-flowing basketball wasn’t there and I look at the sheet and we’ve scored 87 points.”
The Hawks came into this match after almost a month on the road and with some hot form which saw them rocket into third on the ladder, pushing the Breakers down to fourth and teetering on the edge of the top four.
The Breakers are the best defensive outfit in the league and came up against the best offence in the league.
“We held them to a reasonable total in the first quarter,” Breakers coach Dean Vickerman said.
The Breakers did well to contain the Hawks in the opening quarter keeping the home side to 21 points, with some tight defence limiting the amount of decent shots the Hawks could put up.
The home side shot a mere 30 per cent in the first quarter but quickly found some form in the second quarter as they exploited numerous turnovers from New Zealand who went ice cold.
The Breakers began to rush every possession, which resulted in more missed shots and turnovers allowing the Hawks to run riot, much to the delight of their home fans decked out in canary yellow.
“Every time we’ve played them this season, there has been a five-minute period where they’ve just created a margin on us and we just couldn’t peg it back,” Vickerman added.
The crux of the damage came in the second quarter where the Breakers amassed a mere nine points, as the Hawks drew away with some pinpoint shooting from Kirk Penney who scored 28.
The shooting guard was again on fire against his former and has averaged over 30 points in three games against the Breakers.
“I thought we made it a little bit tougher for him [Penney] tonight, he got a number of those off offensive boards,” Vickerman said.
Indeed the home side fought for every board, rarely allowing the visitors a clean take off the backboard. The Hawks finished with 24 offensive rebounds, while New Zealand could only grab 21 of their own boards.
“At the start of season we were the worst rebounding team and worst defensive team. Now in the second half of the season we’re damn good; we’re one of the best rebounding teams,” Beveridge said.
“Rebounding is a mindset and New Zealand are the best rebounding team and tonight we beat them and I’m absolutely ecstatic about that.”
The second-chance efforts and forced turnovers provided a lot more opportunities for Illawarra, making up for a low field-goal percentage.
As the NBL went into its Heritage round the home side graced the court draped in blue and gold, a resemblance to their inaugural 1979 strip. The Breakers wore a black and grey strip engrained with the name of each player since their 2003 inception.
Kevin Lisch proved to be a nightmare for the opposition grabbing four steals and contained the Breakers go-to man Corey Webster.
Webster did score 23 points, although the majority came in the second half after most of the damage had been done.
“I think we can learn a lot from this, I think our defence saved us in spurts that game, we can take some positives but there’s plenty to work on,” Lisch said.
The Breakers have now lost four out of their past five games and are in danger of dropping out of the top four. They will also face the Hawks again this Sunday who are in a position to sweep last year’s champions.
“We’ve lost three in a row right now and this team doesn’t accept that, we’ll come out with the right intent on Sunday,” Vickerman said.
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