Adris Deleon and Lance Hurdle listen intently as Hawks coach Gordie McLeod offers advice. Picture: KEN ROBERTSON
Wollongong players have given Hawks teammate Adris Deleon a vote of confidence for tonight's duel with Cairns Taipans.
Deleon drove Wollongong's 7-1 start to the season, averaging 17 points off the bench, to stamp himself as the top candidate for NBL Sixth Man of the Year honours.
But he has endured a shooting slump over the past six weeks and his scoring has dipped to 13 points a game.
Deleon's drop in form has coincided with Wollongong losing six of their past seven games, though the run of defeats has more to do with the Hawks' terrible rebounding.
The Hawks have rallied around Deleon and urged him to stay positive.
"We know he's a good player," team captain Oscar Forman said.
"I had a word to him [on Wednesday] and just told him our whole team has complete faith and belief in him. I told him 'don't doubt yourself', because at times he's doubted himself and doubted his shot. The last thing he needs is someone else compounding that by doubting him as well.
"He's been better at training and he just needs to get back to being confident and being himself, because we've certainly got complete faith and confidence in him.
"As a team, we can't lump everything on him. We can't be throwing him the ball in the fourth quarter on every play and saying 'you have to do it'. Some games it works fantastic, but we can take pressure off him.
"[Point guard] Rhys [Martin] has been doing a great job of that and [shooting guard] Lance [Hurdle] is stepping up and playing well, so we need to work together and not just leave it to Adris."
The Hawks are tired of fielding questions about recent rebounding woes - they have tallied 188 boards in the past seven games compared to their opponents' 283 - and know there's only one way to silence critics.
Forman believes good rebounding isn't just about boxing out and when to jump.
"Obviously there's been a lot made about our rebounding in these losses, but a big part of that is sometimes we can get too uptight about it, and we don't want to play tense and uptight," the 30-year-old forward said.
"As soon as we play a relaxed and free-flowing, confident game, that's when we play good basketball and good things happen.
"It's definitely not panic stations from our perspective. It's more about re-directing our concentration in certain areas.
"We can take confidence from the last three games because it was a two-point loss to a great team like New Zealand and then there was two overtime games before that. We know we're right there.
"We're still in the top four because of the work we did early in the season. There are some games that haven't gone our way recently and early on there was some games that went our way that possibly shouldn't have, so that kind of balances out.
"Of course we don't want to piss away the start we've had, so we need to make sure we win the next few games."
Despite sitting on the bottom of the ladder, the Taipans boast a strong line-up on paper.
"They'll be desperate," Forman said.
"They've been struggling and losing games at home, so they're going to come in with everything. On the other hand, losing games can also splinter a team a little bit and people can tend to go individual.
"It's our last home game before we go on a five-day road stretch. We need to put in a good, solid performance and stop the slide."
