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The Hawks have held off a tough challenge from the 36ers, pulling away in the fourth quarter to win 104-97 at the Wollongong Entertainment Centre.
The Hawks have now won their last seven in a row at home and with three of their last four fixtures at the Sandpit, they are in a good position for a top two finish.
Adelaide on the other hand have three of their last five matches away from home and will be feeling the heat from the fifth-placed New Zealand Breakers.
The Hawks came into this match without the services of their top scorer Kirk Penney. Penney is out with a burst blood vessel and expected to return for Illawarra’s crunch match against Melbourne.
In Penney’s absence Kevin Lisch and AJ Ogilvy stood up in a big way, finishing with 27 and 21 points respectively.
Lisch was outstanding all game, while Ogilvy provided some clutch plays late in the game as the scores were level.
The key moment came with just over five minutes remaining when Rhys Martin fired an alley-oop into the hands of Ogilvy, who slammed it down hard to give the home side a firm lead.
AJ then backed it up on the other end; blocking Ebi Ere who had lit up the scoreboard for the 36ers in the second half.
Lisch and Ogilvy then combined for a half-court steal on 36ers superstar Jerome Randle.
“I think the positive was how well we dug in, got the stops we needed,” Kevin Lisch said.
“I thought we grinded out the game but then I looked up and we had scored 104 points.”
It was here the 36ers fast paced offense, which had helped them come back from an early slump, became they’re undoing, committing some key turnovers and shooting off-balanced helped the Hawks close out a thriller.
“We feel If we got stops, we could go out on transition…that was successful for us but at the end of that game; we got stops and they (Illawarra) got five offensive rebounds, then the and one from Oscar (Forman), it was a big turning point in the game,” Adelaide coach Joey Wright said.
“It was extremely hard for us to get the ball inbounds, it was extremely easy for them to get the ball inbounds, they bring it up the court with no pressure, we bring it up with a lot of pressure.”
Hawks coach Rob Beveridge echoed Wright’s sentiments and praised his team’s toughness.
“I think we did a hell of a job of creating the physicality, normally we don’t do that, we get pushed around,” Beveridge said.
It looked like the home side were doing fine without their ace shooter, with a 26-16 lead at the first break.
Despite not finding a three-pointer in the first quarter, they had no such problems inside; threading the needle to find some good looks in the paint.
The Hawks could not buy a three in the first half making just 1 from 17 attempts, the 36ers not much better with 2 from 7 beyond the arc.
They finished the game with a low 17 per cent three-pointers made but Illawarra found other ways to score.
“I challenged the guys…what do we now do? Where we’re not shooting the ball well, how are we going scoring our points? We have to get to the rim and get to the foul line,” Beveridge said.
“First half we get to the line four times, 20 in the second.”
Adelaide were able to exploit some lazy transition D in the Second quarter, as they moved the ball up the court with pace.
“They’re a great transition team and I was disappointed with our defensive transition, I thought we really did a good job on offense and then let ourselves down, they were hitting layups and ramming it down our throats,” Beveridge said.
It was here Jerome Randle showed why he leads the point-scoring tally in the NBL, the Hawks defence struggled to lock him down as Adelaide worked their way back into the match to be down 44-43 at half-time, to set up a thrilling second half.
At the same time the 36ers started to lock-up inside to halt the momentum of the free-scoring Hawks, with Kevin Lisch providing most of the offense in the first half, hitting 7 field goals.
The third quarter went tit for tat, as Adelaide maintained a high tempo offense and Illawarra started to find their range.
Ebi Ere and Randle continued to trade threes with the Hawks as the 36ers kept in the game, but a few offensive and one’s and key offensive rebounds to the home side pushed the margin out to far.
Adelaide will have a chance to bounce back when they host Illawarra at the Titanium Security Arena on Saturday.
“When you got to Adelaide, they got crowds of 7 to 8 thousand, once they get on a roll, it’s really hard to stop that,” Beveridge said.
“Adelaide’s one of the loudest environments.”
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