The Hawks square off with the Taipans on Saturday night in Cairns, armed with renewed determination to end a nine-game losing slump.

Cairns’ three straight losses seem pale by comparison, but the signs aren’t good considering they started the season with six successive wins.

Last-placed Wollongong are up against the Crocodiles in Townsville on Sunday night and will all but drop out of finals contention if they don’t return home with at least one win.

‘‘No-one wants to be the team that breaks our losing streak and that might play on their minds a little bit,’’ Hawks captain Oscar Forman said.

‘‘Teams want to beat us to keep us down, or it can get in their head that they’re more worried about not losing to us. Hopefully that puts a bit of doubt in their minds.’’

Wollongong went down by 16 to New Zealand last week, while the Taipans were thrashed 93-76 by the Kings in Sydney on Thursday.

‘‘Everyone’s fine with their role when you win five or six in a row, but when you lose three in a row, that’s when people might start to second-guess things,’’ Forman said.

‘‘Having said that, we’re just worrying about ourselves and hoping we can fix our own issues.

‘‘We need to build on that defence we played for the majority of the game against New Zealand, and be confident and more free-flowing with our offence.’’

Knowing they are running out of time to turn their season around, the Hawks intend to rely more on an up-tempo style this weekend.

‘‘If you can get a couple of cheap high percentage shots it takes the pressure off having to run perfect offensive sets,’’ Forman said.

‘‘We had some similar offensive issues last year and we put a huge focus on getting a lot more out of our fast break, pushing it down and getting cheap transition points. You just need to get a couple of easy ones that you generate from good defence.

‘‘It’s more of a fun style of basketball and it gets everyone a little more positive throughout the game and gets the scoreboard ticking over, rather than have to grind out every point.’’

Forman believes Hawks centre Luke Nevill poses potential match-up problems for the Taipans.

‘‘Luke might be able to cause a bit of trouble inside,’’ he said.

‘‘They are physical but they don’t have tremendous height. [Matt] Burston’s tall but he’s not an absolute beast down there, so Luke should be alright against him when he comes and gives us minutes.’’