They didn't win their first two games on the back of chest-beating predictions and the Wollongong Hawks haven't changed their approach for tomorrow's home meeting with Townsville.
Wollongong are sharing top spot with title favourites Perth and looked sharp in last week's road win over Cairns.
Victory over the Crocodiles will give them their best start since the 2004-05 season when they opened with four consecutive wins.
But Hawks point guard Rhys Martin reckons his team will have a much clearer picture of their place in the pecking order as they approach the season's halfway point.
"It's hard to gauge after two games. When you get 10 or 12 games in, you've got a pretty good understanding of who's going to be up there," Martin said.
"We're just focusing on this one win and not trying to worry about the bigger picture. If we can get wins at home and keep jagging wins on the road, that goes a long way down the stretch."
Martin has started ahead of import playmaker Adris Deleon and isn't about to relinquish his spot.
"If we're winning I hope not, but whatever [coach Gordie McLeod] wants to do I'm happy with," the 26-year-old Queenslander said.
"We like to run systems and it's something that I've learnt over the last three years. Those guys [Deleon and Tyson Demos] are great sparks off the bench. If they can pick the tempo up and get points, that's what we want. Whether they're starting or coming off the bench, that's the role they have to fill.
"With Tyson back [from a knee injury], it'll be good having him there to strengthen our rotation.
"A lot of the pre-season was without Lance [Hurdle] and Adris, so to keep the wins going with those two guys still picking up what we're doing is pretty good."
Plenty has been said about Deleon's match-up with former Hawks star Gary Ervin tomorrow, but Martin trained against Ervin almost every day in the 2010-11 season and probably knows his game as well as anyone.
"It'll be fun," he said. "Gary's quick and likes to get to the hoop. He's right-handed so if we can try and slow him down and make him dribble on his left and shoot from the perimeter, we're in good shape there."
Martin said the Hawks had concentrated more on the positives than the negatives of last season's eighth-place finish.
"We looked at things we did do well and tried to focus more on those, and stayed away from the things we suffered from," he said.
"If you're a defensively-minded team and you're not making the score tick over, you really have to stand up with one-on-one containment and good team rotations. Those things are going to get highlighted if you're not shooting the ball very well."