The competition's best offence comfortably triumphed over the best defence in a game that resembled a shootout from start to finish. Unfortunately for the Breakers (10-6), they were often on the wrong end of all that shooting as the Hawks (10-7) led from wire to wire.
Penney, one of the best players to ever represent the Kiwi club, haunted his former teammates from the moment he made his opening shot, finishing with 27 points to back up the 36 he grabbed when the teams met in October. And the Tall Black revealed post-game his motivation was sourced not from battling his friends but entertaining his watching family.
"When we've got 20 tickets allocated to the team and I take 18 of them, it probably means a lot to me to come and play well," Penney said. "I knew my family was there - from my mum to my cousins to my nieces and nephews - and whenever they're here you want to go out and put on a good show for them.
"Fortunately enough, it worked out and a few shots dropped."
They were dropping with equal regularity for his partner in crime as Lisch showed why he, too, once won the competition's MVP award, hurting the home side with 24 points.
Corey Webster (25) and Tai Wesley (20) packed plenty of their own offensive punch but, aside from their 20 turnovers, that end of the floor was rarely a problem for Dean Vickerman's side. Rather, it was the defence that proved woefully deficient against an opposition boasting, in Penney and Lisch, the third- and fourth-highest scorers in the competition.
"They showed we they're two of the premier players in the league right now and we didn't do a good enough job on them," Vickerman said. "We tried to double them at different times and make them make passes but there were mixed results on that one."
The majority of damage was done in the opening five minutes, as the Hawks began almost flawlessly from the floor to jump out to a 26-9 lead. That burst was sparked, of course, with Penney, whose first shot found nothing but net from the three-point line. And once Lisch had twice repeated that feat, the nature of the threat the Breakers were facing was perfectly illustrated.
The pair combined for 30 points in the first half and, while the Breakers did show some signs of life once Webster warmed up, the home side never closed within double figures after the halftime break. All that was left was for the last rites to be read and for a satisfied Penney to receive a warm hand as he made his way to the bench for the final time.
Breakers 83 (Webster 25, Wesley 20, Abercrombie 12)
Hawks 107 (Penney 27, Lisch 24, Ogilvy 18)
