A FULL-strength Illawarra Hawks will square off with the Townsville Crocodiles on Tuesday night in north Queensland after American guard Kevin Lisch was cleared to play.
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Lisch took no part in the NBL Blitz last week due to a calf injury and also sat out Illawarra’s trial against his former team Perth a fortnight ago at Moss Vale.
The 29-year-old travelled with the team to Townsville and is a confirmed starter for Illawarra’s final preseason hit-out.
‘‘Lisch will play,’’ Illawarra coach Rob Beveridge said.
‘‘We had a physio up here with us who treated him every day. We put him through a rigorous fitness test on Saturday and he got through it with no pain.’’
The Hawks played three games at the five-day Blitz, losing their opener 106-99 to Melbourne before beating Sydney 78-73 and Adelaide 86-70.
Forward Tim Coenraad averaged a team-leading 19.3 points, while centre AJ Ogilvy had 15.3 per game. Oscar Forman (13.6) and Rhys Martin (11.3) also stood out.
High profile recruit Kirk Penney (hamstring strain) missed the Hawks’ clashes with Melbourne and Sydney before returning against Adelaide and scoring seven points in 17 minutes off the bench.
Beveridge is looking forward to having his entire playing roster intact against the Crocs.
‘‘Playing this extra game will be good because we’ve got the full team together,’’ he said.
‘‘If we can play Kev 15 to 20 minutes that’d be ideal, and Penney was a bit rusty so we need to push up his minutes because he needs a blowout.’’
After giving up 106 points in the loss to eventual Blitz champions Melbourne, the Hawks sharpened their defensive focus.
‘‘It was really good against Melbourne, just to get up and down and shoot the ball with freedom and not bogged down in a boring half-court grind,’’ Beveridge said.
‘‘In the next game we decided we had to get better defensively, and against Adelaide we just totally dominated the whole tempo.
‘‘We just locked Sydney down in the second quarter. Cookie and Flinny [assistant coaches Eric Cooks and Matt Flinn] were saying it was one of the best defensive quarters they’d seen in a long time.’’
Illawarra tip off their 2015-16 campaign with an October 8 road game against Cairns.
As much as he loves his team’s offensive firepower, Beveridge is excited about the Hawks’ defensive potential.
‘‘They’ve set the benchmark now that they can actually play defence,’’ he said.
‘‘The Rhys Martins, the Oscar Formans and Tim Coenraads that aren’t known for defence, they got right in there and had a crack and were really good.
‘‘We don’t want to be a kamikaze team that just blazes away. We want to get lots of shots up, but we want to get good shots and good tempo, and then have the ability to lock teams down. We showed we can do it in patches and we want to build on that.’’