Not too many of us saw that coming.
The assumption in 0800 Easy LPG Hawks country was that the NBL Finals organisers had basically handed our team a 1-0 lead. The defending champions, playing perennial pretenders the Nelson Giants at Pettigrew-Green Arena? It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
Instead the Giants showed, for the third time this season, that they are a superior team to the Hawks. You can't watch them win 76-67 and come to any other conclusion, unfortunately.
Still, the talk coming out of the Hawks' camp is of the fighting variety. They'll take game two in Nelson tonight and then the title itself tomorrow. Tellingly, though, none of that talk came from coach Shawn Dennis. He sidestepped the media last night and SportToday can only surmise that he was so disgusted with his team's performance that he left it for the players to try and explain.
Let's start with co-captain Paora Winitana.
"We gave up far too many offensive rebounds and you're not going to get it done if you don't rebound. You can score, you can play defence, but you won't win without rebounding," Winitana told SportToday.
Bench forward Clifton Bush had his own view.
"When you don't put the ball in the hole, you're not going to win. It's as simple as that," Bush said.
"I think that's our lowest scoring game for the season and we certainly chose the wrong time to do that. They hurt us in the first half with offensive rebounds and those put-backs stopped us from getting a nice little 10-point lead.
"In the second half we put that right, but we still couldn't get it in the hole. We missed lay-ups we'd normally make and I don't think it was because we were tentative coming in here. Unfortunately we just had to pick the big night to put in a bad performance."
So chaps, can you still win it from here?
"Without rebounds, it's impossible. But, of course, we can," Winitana said.
"This game pretty much sums up the season for me, because we've never done things the easy way," chipped in Bush.
"It's been a hard season, so why not finish it up with two hard games. I think if we get the next one then I really like our chances. All we need is one game and that's the next one. That's all we need to concentrate on and when we win that, it'll come down to finals experience in that third game and I like our chances."
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