Breakers v Hawks
North Shore Events Centre, 7.30 tonight
Kirk Penney remembers the feeling well - the helplessness, the crushing disappointment, the pondering where it all went wrong.
It is the eve of a rematch he and his teammates badly want to win, but Penney isn't thinking about November, when the Wollongong Hawks came to town and smashed the
lifeless Breakers to pieces.
He's thinking about what it felt like sitting in an airport lounge in Cairns earlier in the year knowing the club's 2009-10 season was over. The Breakers had just won a sixth match in a row, but a horror run mid-season meant the playoff door was slammed shut on the league's hottest team.
A flashback while sitting in that same airport lounge after Sunday's remarkable comeback victory over the Taipans was all Penney needed to be reminded that the runaway ANBL leaders' job is far from done.
"I remember walking into that lounge last year so disappointed and distraught that this team did not make the playoffs when I thought we were good enough to win it," Penney said. "This year we walked in and we had just beaten Cairns and were top of the table. I kind of had those flashbacks and it was like 'you know what, we have to keep working here, and understand that it is not just this year, it is years that have gone into building this team'.
"With the past years, the experiences we've had and the letdowns, we want to be here and we feel like we deserve to be here."
Here is 14-3, with a handy lead over a chasing pack of Perth (12-7), Cairns (11-7) and Townsville (11-8).
Not all that long ago that pack included Wollongong. In fact, not all that long ago Wollongong were the club being chased. The round six victory over the Breakers - a match in which the New Zealand franchise posted their lowest ever score of 57 points - took the Hawks to 6-1, clear top of the ANBL ladder.
How times have changed. A run of seven straight defeats has dropped the Hawks to 9-9. Over the same span the Breakers have gone 9-1, firmly establishing themselves as the title favourites.
The Hawks' demise provides a ready reminder for a Breakers team wary of complacency.
"Wollongong were 9-2," Penney said. "Things can change pretty fast. We just have to make sure we stay healthy, take care of our bodies and keep working to get a greater distance on the table."
The first half of Sunday's victory contained echoes of that horrific November defeat. Against a Taipans side boasting a perfect 9-0 home record, the Breakers mustered just 26 first-half points - one fewer than in the defeat to Wollongong. But unlike the Wollongong game, this time there was a fightback, with the Breakers reeling in a 20-point deficit to win 77-74.
"We learned a lot from that [Wollongong] game," Penney said. "We had just come back from Perth. We had a tough game up there and the travel was very intense. Because we lost we trained so hard [and] by the time we got to the game we were just exhausted. It showed in how we ... played.
"We used up all our energy and emotions from the loss and then we didn't bring it when we needed to bring it."
This time, the Breakers have adopted the opposite approach. Tuesday's training was cancelled to allow the players to freshen up. Yesterday's session was short and sharp.
"We've learned that we need to take care of ourselves, especially this time of year," Penney said. "It becomes a bit of a grind.
"But this season things are going our way for once. We are the ones who aren't getting injuries and are closing out games. In the past it hasn't always gone that way for us."
