'We owe them': Hawks buzzing for Christmas Day clash against the Sydney Kings

If so Illawarra Hawks fans can take some strength from the fact their team will be out to cause a Christmas Day boilover when they battle reigning back-to-back NBL champions the Kings in Sydney on Monday night.

The clash comes just two nights after the resurgent Hawks' bubble was burst by a rampant Tasmania JackJumpers in Wollongong.

While the 100-89 loss at WIN Entertainment Centre was disappointing, Illawarra responded well after being 'hit in the mouth' early to outscore the JackJumpers 59-49 in the second half of Saturday night's clash.

This pleased Hawks interim coach Justin Tatum but he stressed the days of Illawarra being happy with just improving after poor starts, were over.

"[The second half] is a positive but it's not what we want to keep doing. We don't want to keep improving off bad starts," he said.

"We understand that we are improving. Our competitive nature is through the roof right now, but at the end of the day, we have to start competing from the start of the game.

"We just can't keep hoping that we will dig ourselves a hole and then we'll be satisfied with competing at the end. That's not who we want to be."

The Hawks came into the Tasmania game in good form, with three wins from their last four starts, but were on the back foot early after scoring only 10 points in the first quarter.

Illawarra were down 51-30 at the half before winning the third (26-22) and fourth (33-27) quarters on the back of fine performances from captain Sam Froling (22 points and 11 rebounds) and Gary Clark (18 points and three assists).

The damage though had been done early with Tatum lamenting the Hawks' poor first quarter in particular.

"That opening quarter wasn't who we were, we kind of fell back to the old mentality of us not coming out and competing in the first five minutes of the game," he said.

"But the second half was of the team we are starting to build of, so I'm excited how my guys finished competing and winning both of those quarters but we have a long way to go.

'[Tonight] we just weren't ready to play. I'm going to put that on myself. My guys have to understand that you can't let a team this good, who is at the top of the food chain, to allow that many good looks and get into rhythm otherwise we will be in a hole like we were."

Tatum added while he was disappointed by the loss, just his second from five starts since taking over from Jacob Jackomas, he saw enough in the second half to give him confidence of an improved showing against the Kings on Christmas Day.

"In the locker room we talked about how that was one of the positives and if we come out and compete like we did in the second half........we could at least respect ourselves a lot more because we were ready for the game.

"We are going to let this sink in for awhile but we are going into Monday fresh and ready to go," he said.

"This league is unbelievably tough. If you're at the top of the food chain or in the middle or the bottom, it's always a tough challenge.

"That's something that we have to start consistently preparing ourselves for, to be ready for that challenge because right now we dug ourselves so deep a hole record wise and our expectation is to get to the playoffs.

"We can't keep having mishaps like this.

"We know Sydney is going to be ready to go after a loss from New Zealand the other night and we should have the same fire."

Sam Froling backed his coach's comments, adding he was looking forward to downing a Kings side who have won both games the two teams have contested this season.

"It will be fun. I mean, almost every game against Sydney's fun. On Christmas Day it will be fun.

"We owe them. They beat us twice already this season so we got to go out there and soak it all in and come out ready to go."

American-born Tatum, who is no stranger to big sports events being played during major holidays such as Christmas, added the day and the game against the Kings was special for him and his players.

"It's a special day to me for sure," he said.

"We're happy with the crowd that we had tonight, WIN Entertainment Centre was rocking. We just wish we could have given them a good early Christmas present.

"But I think they see how we're trending and so hopefully our next home game we see just as good a crowd if not more.

"But we're excited about Monday. We should be hungrier now.

"I told the guys let [the loss] soak in, it should hurt. We don't want nobody leaving our locker room laughing or joking about anything.

"Let this one hurt, enjoy your time with your family and come ready to go to work on Monday.

"We feel that we are talented just like those teams at the top, we just got to put four quarters together.

"We got hit in our mouth early tonight by a really good team, really well coached. We tip our hats off to them. We kind of want to simulate them as we progress.

"This was a lesson learned for us and hopefully it is the last one."