They are nearing the end of an eight-day lay-off heading into Thursday's road meeting with the New Zealand Breakers and have another nine-day break before Saturday week's home game against Perth.

"We're going through a patch where we're having a limited number of games in a fairly long period, and it's probably not what we needed because we wanted to keep the momentum going," Wollongong coach Gordie McLeod said.

"We're going through this phase now and then things really start to heat up for us.

"The last part of December is pretty busy and then we have a really big January and February. We have to get some things in place now and build from here."

Despite losing their past two games, the Hawks have avoided a drop down the ladder.

One of six teams with seven victories under their belt, Wollongong (7-5) are sharing top spot with the Adelaide 36ers and Perth Wildcats.

"It just shows you the real closeness of the competition and it's going to be a real dogfight right to the very end," McLeod said.

"The challenge for us is to keep getting better because the rest of the league is certainly getting better, and the way we do that is consistency.

"We need consistency in our individual performances and we need to continue to work on our offensive and defensive systems."

Swingman Tim Coenraad said the Hawks were upbeat about their chances of upsetting the Breakers, who welcomed back star guard Kirk Penney in last week's big win over Cairns.

"They've got a lot of great talent and team morale is going to lift when you get a player back like Penney," Coenraad said.

"We're just anxious to go out and play again because we want to get last week's loss out of our heads.

"We're not going to change our system. We have to stick to our guns. We can't go changing all our stuff just because we lose a couple of games.

"We know we've got a good enough team and our system works. We all believe in what Gordie's put in and everyone buys into it and we're going to live and die by that."