Whispers that the sharp-shooting American guard will return to Wollongong in 2015/16 grew louder this week after the Hawks were trounced in last weekend’s season-ending games.

Clarke was voted the league’s best player when he starred with the Hawks in 2013/14. The club tried to retain him but he opted to play for a team in Belgium’s national league this season and is averaging 19 points per game.

The Hawks finished last with six wins from 28 games and management is set to shake up the playing roster.

Re-uniting Clarke and point guard Rhys Martin in the Wollongong backcourt is high on the club’s wish list.

‘‘Obviously we tried to recruit him this year, and when we start looking at what we’ll need next year we’ll definitely go back and look at those options,’’ Hawks coach Gordie McLeod said.

‘‘He was very successful here and he would certainly be on the list if we’re looking for a scoring guard. Obviously that was something we were probably lacking this year with regards to potency from the three-point line.’’

Wollongong’s four players under contract next season are captain Oscar Forman, forwards Tim Coenraad and Brad Hill and centre Luke Nevill.

The club’s free agents include Martin, Larry Davidson, Tyson Demos, Gary Ervin and Jahii Carson.

McLeod has been talking to the players this week and is set to commence retention and recruitment discussions with Hawks general manager Kim Welch.

‘The process at the moment is just meeting with all the players and that will be finished by Monday, then I’ll sit down with Kim and we’ll be putting together the stuff we need to start evaluating,’’ McLeod said.

‘‘This window now is the free agent window, where clubs have to evaluate their own guys, because we’ve got up to two weeks after the grand final to sign guys. Obviously the teams that are out of the playoffs, the process comes forward with all that.’’

McLeod has been scrutinising the playing rosters of other clubs and identified potential recruits.

‘‘We’ve already started working on the free agents list and our evaluation of guys that we think will be on that,’’ he said.

‘‘When you have a result like we’ve had, you have to say there’s going to be changes, so we have to look at what ways we can change. There’s only two ways to do that. One way is what you can get on the free agents list or the other way is that we have to look at our imports.

‘‘The other thing along with that is that we have to find out what our budget is, and that’s what’s Kim is working on. Once we know those things we’ll then have the parameters of where we need to start from.’’