Wollongong Hawks coach Eric Cooks remains guarded over his starting five for tonight's road duel with the New Zealand Breakers.
While Mat Campbell and Kavossy Franklin are certain to form the starting backcourt combination, and Glen Saville is the obvious choice for the three-spot, mystery surrounds Cooks' choices for power forward and centre.
Dusty Rychart and Cam Tragardh got the nod in the pre-season games, but Larry Davidson is the club's tallest player and could be promoted at Tragardh's expense if the team line-ups for this week's training scrimmages by the Hawks were any guide.
Off-season recruit Anthony Petrie was also impressive in trials and could easily come into calculations.
Cooks had all but made up his mind on the team on Monday but was reluctant to give anything away.
"I'm pretty confident which way we'll go, but I would like to make sure everybody is totally fit and healthy, and see how we are with our timing and execution," he said.
"We swapped up throughout the day and used a number of different line-ups.
"All 10 guys can play, and the group you saw at the end of the session, I just want them to get the opportunity to play with each other and get their timing working," Cooks said.
After adding Saville, Rychart, Rhys Martin and Petrie in the off-season, the Hawks have declared themselves genuine top-six contenders.
They play their first home game on Saturday night against the Sydney Spirit, but standing in their way first are the Breakers.
Cooks has been preaching defence during his side's build-up to the season.
"Defence will be massive against this team - they've got a lot of three-point shooters," he said.
"They could be better than last year. It depends on how they blend together, but talent-wise, they have improved.
"We've improved as well and it's definitely a winnable game," Cooks added.
"We don't want to give them any easy baskets, so we have to give them nothing in transition and find their shooters.
"We match up well with them. Defensively we're a bit switched on more than last year and we've got smarter players on the court, so we should be able to counter them pretty well."
Cooks said that playing five pre-season games on the road had galvanised the Hawks.
"We won three games on the road and it gave us belief we can go anywhere and win," the Hawks coach said.
"It'll be a hostile crowd there - it always is - but we're pretty mentally tough.
"We've dealt with a lot of different adversity and we're really ready for this game on the road.
"A first-up win on the road has the potential to set up our season.
"We'll go in there and hopefully get our confidence up early and bring it back when we play Sydney.
"But right now the first game is our main focus."
The Breakers reached the play-offs for the first time in their history last season and the addition of CJ Bruton and Dillon Boucher has New Zealand fans expecting another winning season.
Email a friend