Hawks set for home game of the season against Rams despite weekend losses

New Hawks import Brandon Alston, from Washington DC, pictured in practice at the Rodney Green Arena in Taradale ahead of the matches in the South Island over King's Birthday weekend. Photo / Supplied

The Hawke’s Bay Hawks are set for the likely home game of the season despite a shattering holiday-weekend end to the season’s four-match southern campaign.

Having beaten both Southland Sharks and Otago Nuggets in the deep South just over a week earlier, they returned for two more, but hopes of completing the rare four southern wins vanished when beaten 105-101 by Sal’s NBL leaders and 2023 and 2024 champions the Canterbury Rams in a Saturday-night cliffhanger in Christchurch.

What-ifs turned to despair as the Hawks were hammered 117-81 by the Nelson Giants in Nelson on a King’s Birthday stopover to forget.

The Hawks led 32-25 at the end of the first quarter, looking to substantiate their place in the top six.

But they could do little then but admire the Giants as they ran up the century with still seven minutes to go in the last quarter and made it two-from-two against the Hawks in the last three weeks, with just their fourth win in 14 matches.

The previous night’s result was the Big Barrel Hawks’ sixth consecutive NBL loss to the Rams since their home and away wins in 2022, a sequence that included a Canterbury player’s hand-of-god, last-seconds poke through the hoop that denied the chance of a place in the 2023 final.

The Hawks won a pre-season Westside Blitz match between the two franchises in Westport in March, and four of the starting five in that win were on the team again on Saturday, when new import Brandon Alston was rushed straight into action, taking just 32 seconds to get on to the scoresheet.

He finished with 10 points in 27m 22s on court, but the Hawks’ top scorers were Dan Grida, with a game-high 26, and Jackson Ball, whose 25 points included five three-pointers, three of them within 2m 42s in the last quarter for his side to lead 90-88 with 5m 13s to go, the last time the travellers hit the lead.

Six Rams hit double figures, their sheet topped by Walter Brown and Taylor Britt, each with 22.

It was an impressive fight from the Hawks, leading 27-26 at the end of the first quarter, tied 54-54 at halftime and coming back from a nine-point deficit with two and a half minutes to go in the third, which ended with the Rams looking to shut the game out leading 84-76.

Yet the Hawks still grabbed the lead twice in the countdown and were down just 95-94 with 1m 32s remaining, before fouls effectively decided the game, the Rams claiming three doubles from the freethrow line in the last 56 seconds.

Jacob Murphy kept it respectable with a three-pointer three seconds before the final buzzer.

The Hawks start their regular-season run of five matches at home against the Rams at Rodney Green Arenas, Taradale, on Saturday.

The Hawks won the Rapid League curtain-raiser 46-38 against Canterbury but dropped Monday’s game 42-20 against the Giants.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 52 years of journalism experience, 42 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.