Coach Kirsten Daly-Taylor said if her men were scoring only 67 points in a game then offensively they were doing something wrong.
"I have to sit down and help my boys. We are a great scoring team so we need to put up 80 and keep Taranaki to 74 so that's the goal," said former Tall Fern Daly-Taylor.
"We're stagnant. We had patches," she lamented after the Hawks started with the traditional hiss and a roar with nine unanswered points but came up shy in the first quarter, 19-16.
Despite the drought, she said her men were in high spirits.
"They are an amazing bunch of men so there's no worries with morale or issues with each other. We've just got to keep chipping away."
The Hawks play their penultimate home game today against the James Blond Supercity Rangers in another 3pm tip off before their final PG Arena effort against the same side this Friday from 7pm.
The remaining six games are on the road with the playoffs now just a pipe dream.
With the PG Arena 40 per cent full on gold coins, Daly-Taylor said it meant a lot to the team that fans were still supporting them even though they hadn't won a game.
Captain Aidan Daly and his men came back emphatically in the second quarter 38-34 (22-15) to go upbeat to the locker room at halftime but Taranaki gave them a 53-50 (19-12) reply in the following 15 minutes to regain the lead. The third quarter was pronounced for players from both sides putting the heat on the referees to control the physicality stakes.
Taranaki coach RossMcMains said to referee Kieran Udy early in that spell: "If you don't keep control of things it'll get out of hand."
That aside, both sides coughed up unforced errors and found themselves offside with the shot clock amid a couple of players needing a helping hand to get up from the court. In the last quarter, the visitors marched to a healthy lead to force the Hawks to play high-risk, catch-up basketball.
With 1:08 left on the clock, Hawks guard Matt Te Huna gave the hosts some hope with a bucket from downtown to narrow the margin to 62-68 before reloading to make it 65-75 but it just wasn't to be.
The last quarter went 21-17 to the Airs as the Hawks' sniffing chance pretty much came down to needing two miraculous back-to-back three-pointers to take the game into overtime.
The Hawks were caught shy in the points-in-the-paint department (55 per cent to 40 per cent) but weren't too far off Taranaki in points off the bench (17-19).
What bothered Daly-Taylor most was the charity-line statistics - 6/12 to the Hawks and 21/38 to the Airs.
"They got to the free-throw line 38 times and we got 12 so what is that all about? How did we not get there more. We're obviously not attacking hard enough. We need to make the raps and the calls to make easy points from the free-throw line."
It was imperative for her men to make runs because they were a little stagnant.
She said unfortunately Airs' US import, Daniel Miller, "killed" them on the base line.
"I didn't adjust quick enough. We needed to front him so he didn't get the balls quick enough."
Bailey-Nowell asked his troops to slow down the pace before employing a full-court press defence while trailing 9-0 in the first spell.
However, it didn't take Taranaki long to level the scores, 11-11, approaching the 12th-minute mark before sealing the quarter, 19-16.
Hawks US import Kareem Johnson chalked up another double-double with 14 points and a dozen rebounds (nine defensively) while fellow forward Darryl Jones claimed 10 points and five off the glass.
"Kareem is physically stepping up to meet any team coming in right now so it's brilliant," Daly-Taylor said.
Te Huna and Alonzo Burton contributed 14 points and 10, respectively, while forward Arthur Trousdell scored nine points and collected seven rebounds.
For the Airs, US imports Marcus Johnson and Miller both graduated with double-double honours of 17/11 and 16/11, respectively.
Bailey-Nowell said their imports would continue to thrive if they adhered to McMains' philosophy.
Jordan Ngatai scored 14 points and five rebounds while Brad Anderson added 11 points for the visitors.
