On Thursday the Hawks will look to complete the toughest pair of back-to-back wins on offer in the  NBL: New Zealand away into the Wildcats at Perth Arena.

To do so the Hawks will need to overcome a 10-year 20 game hoodoo in the west that stretches back to November 2005 and includes a 91-62 hammering in round four this season.

They will also be looking to avoid a 4-0 sweep at the hands of the Wildcats after twice letting victory slip through their fingers on their home floor earlier this season.

The most glaring choke came in round six when a red-hot Jermaine Beal dropped 14 points in the final seven minutes to overturn an 11-point deficit and extend the Wildcats run of dominance over the Hawks.

The fade out prompted a blast from coach Rob Beveridge who labelled his side ‘‘mentally soft’’ in the aftermath.

Sunday’s double-overtime win over the Breakers showed that choking down the stretch is no longer the Hawks MO and Thursday’s clash against the Wildcats offers the opportunity to go full circle.

Beveridge is convinced he’s at the helm of a different side than the one that twice capitulated to the Cats.

‘‘The fact is we were a brand new team,’’ Beveridge said.

‘‘It’s a new system, new coach, new everything.

‘‘We just weren’t ready to win against the Perth’s at that time it’s as simple as that.

‘‘Now we are. We’ve evolved as a group, everybody knows their role and we have this belief that we can win no matter what.

‘‘It’s one of those things where the team only won six games last year and half the guys just didn’t know how to win.

‘‘It took us a while to learn how to do that.”

The winner of Thursday’s clash will climb to outright second on the ladder with just three rounds remaining in the regular season.

Hoodoo talk would no doubt dominate the lead-up to a potential finals clash should the Cats prolong Illawarra’s run of misery at The Jungle but Beveridge isn’t concerned with breaking any spell.

‘‘I really couldn’t care less about that,’’ Beveridge said.

‘‘Obviously we’d love to win but if we lose it’s water off a duck’s back.

‘‘I honestly don’t care because we’ve got this unwavering faith in the group that we can beat them.

‘‘In those two games at home we had them. We were the better team in both those games and didn’t have the ability to win them.

‘‘Now we can. I know we can beat any team in the league on our day.

‘‘Even if we lose this week and go 4-0 down there’ll be zero psychological scarring, we won’t even look at it.”