Basketball: Rookie Hawks NBL team, with a new coach, are ready for success

New Taylor Hawke’s Bay Hawks Sal’s NBL coach Sam Gruggen has been landed with one of the New Zealand game’s bigger challenges with a new squad for the 2024 league.

The team’s season tips off against new side Whai in Tauranga on Thursday night.

Controversially beaten on the buzzer by eventual title-winners the Canterbury Rams in last year’s semi-finals, the Hawks have changed coach in the off-season.

They have also lost a string of starting five players in Ethan Rusbatch and Jordan Hunt (to the Franklin Bulls), Derone Raukawa and Denhym Brooke (Taranaki Airs), and Hyrum Harris (Wellington Saints).

Tall Black Jordan Ngatai, plucked from Wellington Saints a year ago, is still playing in Finland and will miss at least the first game in the expanded 2024 Sal’s NBL.

The latest arrivals - new Hawks coach Sam Gruggen (left) and American import Luke Sutherland about to head for Tauranga for the first game in the 2024 Sal's NBL. Photo / Paul Taylor.

On the up side, 23-year-old American import Luke Sutherland has arrived fresh from a high-scoring role with New York state side Le Moyne College, just in time to get the ball rolling.

Gruggen, 36 and who would by all accounts have coached the Hawks last year but was unavailable, says he’s in for “multiple-seasons”.

His goal is developing a young team of mainly-locals into a champion unit, with the Hawks yet to emulate the franchise’s single NBL final win in 2006.

The temperature in Napier was at 28 degrees as the team assembled at Kennedy Park Complex in Napier for the trip to the Bay of Plenty.

It wasn’t too far removed from the 30-plus climes Gruggen left three weeks ago after the Cairns Taipans’ season ended in the Australian NBL.

A target along the way is “consistency” and getting the team to “love Hawke’s Bay” and “Hawke’s Bay to love the Hawks”, after a 2023 season in which the club, then coached by stalwart player Everard Bartlett, were beaten in the first six home games.

The poor start all but left the season in tatters before a nail-biting run in the last stretch.

Despite the freshness in the squad, the goal is clear: “Top Six – 100 per cent”, Gruggen says.

The prospects will start to materialise early, with the Hawks returning from Tauranga for the first of their home games against the Southland Sharks at the Pettigrew Green Arena on April 7.

They then head off to play Manawatu Jets four days later, before the first big grudge match, against the Rams, in Taradale, on April 20.

Joining Ngatai, Sutherland and fellow imports Isaiah Moore and Josh Roberts are Balin Casson, Clifton Bush lll, George Stent, Harry Keighley, Isaac Cox, Jackson Ball, Jacob Murphy, Keanu Rasmussen, Kobe Kara, Ryder Moore, Tanae Lavery, Tommy Fergusson and Zoram Smiler.

Club stalwart Jarrod Kenny could also take the court.

Sutherland, a 23-year-old NBA draft-eligible forward from Syracuse, NY, is seen as a coup.

“We are really excited to have Luke for this upcoming season. He just finished off a great year at Le Moyne and the coach and staff had excellent reviews on his work ethic and character. We feel Luke will be a great fit for our Hawks organisation and the fans will love him,” Gruggen says.

Kenny described Sutherland as an effortless and consistent shooter “that it is a pleasure to watch”.

“Luke’s skill set compliments the rest of the team we have assembled and I’m looking forward to him having a big impact this season.”