Home truths behind Hawks resurgence

Several players spoke in the wake of their win over Melbourne about the “character” of the group and their efforts to re-discover their “identity.” It meant putting a line under a poor 1-5 stretch that, at it’s worse prompted, Beveridge to suggest his side playing without a spine.

Plenty of people rolled their eyes when they hard talk of being “1-0” after their 82-73 win over Melbourne but Beveridge hasn’t had cause to question his team’s commitment since. A look at stats sheets from their past two games, one could easily guess the Hawks had lost both. Against Melbourne in round five the Hawks gave up 20 offensive rebounds. They gave up a staggering 29 offensive boards to the 36rs and were out-done on the glass 62-49.

It’s a big issue to address but Beveridge was rightly “super, super proud” of his troops for overturning a 16-point deficit midway though the second quarter to find a way to eventually cruise to the win. 

It was a sentiment echoed by Rotnei Clarke in the post -match.

“I think it started at the end of that second quarter,” he said.

“We made that run and came back. We got together, we handled the adversity and as coach said it was all about the character. The guys didn’t let up and we continued to lift each other up.

“We took that into the third quarter and tried to come out in the second half, lock down the defensive end and let that take care of our offence.That let us get out into transition a little bit and we ended up making run, take some momentum into the fourth and we finished it off.”

Clarke hit 3-11 from three-point range but his willingness to fire away from the perimeter was an encouraging sign as was the return to form from the Hawks other sharp-shooters.  Oscar Forman (3-4), Cody Ellis (3-5), Mitch Norton (2-2) and Tim Coenraad (2-6) all made crucial buckets drop to finish with a collective 13 triples, not far off their mark of 16 in their record 122-point outing in round one. 

HAWKS PUT CLAMP ON RANDLE

No doubt plenty of coaches will be taking a look at the Hawks two games against Adelaide this season for some clues to shutting down Jerome Randle.

The MVP favourite came into the match on the back of a 40-point display against Perth but has been kept to a modest 13 and 11 points by the Hawks so far this season.  A full-court press is ordinarily a key plank in Rob Beveridge’s system but it was a switch to a zone on Saturday that proved key in getting the necessary stops to over-turn a 16-point deficit. 

“It was going to be a tag-team [on Randle] with Norto and Whitey but we just got hurt so bad off the dribble that we had to go to a zone [defence],” he said.

“We just couldn’t defend him one-on-one so we had to go to a zone to somehow stop the flow of points and rebounding and it worked really well for us.”