HoopsFest Game Preview: Taipans v Hawks

After a 216-day off-season, the Cairns Taipans have touched down in Perth to launch their 2024-25 campaign, in the inaugural HoopsFest that forms Round 1 of the season. Suiting up at HBF Stadium, the Taipans will face the Illawarra Hawks – with Kyle Adnam returning to the active roster and ready to face his former team.

Taran Armstrong and Jackson Makoi are unavailable and have not travelled to HoopsFest.

Where and When

Saturday, September 21 at HBF Stadium, Perth (8:30pm AEST)

How to Follow

Watch: Live on ESPN

Live Updates: Taipans X

Stats: Box Score

What’s Already Happened

Whilst leaving the Gold Coast winless, the Taipans saw positive signs during their NBL Blitz games where the balance of the team went from a heavy reliance on the new import trio, to the bench being able to draw back a 17-point Brisbane lead and fight to the buzzer.

Illawarra are entering the season after a heartbreaking end in their last campaign. With Head Coach Justin Tatum at the helm for his first full campaign, the Hawks are looking to build upon their success with promising signs in the pre-season where they comfortably defeated the Phoenix, and narrowly lost to the Wildcats and United.

The Hawks’ contribution from the bench has been a major step above the Taipans, with their rotation scoring 116 of 300 points (38%) on the Gold Coast whilst the Snakes bench contributed 61 of 240 (24%) over their opening three games of the Blitz. Despite the bench scoring 70 of 82 points in the Taipans’ final game, the question remains of how well this will convert into the season proper.

Player to Watch

Rob Edwards burst onto the NBL scene on the Gold Coast, averaging 18 points across his first games in orange despite not spending more than 30 minutes on court on any night – quickly building a name for himself in Australia. After resting most of the final game of the NBL Blitz, Edwards is gearing up to explode into the season and hasn’t been afraid to speak his mind on social media.

What’s Been Said

“I think we learnt a lot playing against other teams instead of playing against ourselves, we learnt about our competitiveness – especially in that last game against Brisbane – and we just have to tune a couple things going into the first game of the season,” Taipans forward Kyrin Galloway explained.

“Taran going down wasn’t ideal, but it was able to give us a couple of different perspectives with the lineup, the areas that we need to work on – especially when we’re down a point guard – and things that we need to fine tune. But from a coaching perspective there’s a lot to take away, a lot to work on, and from that this week has been really productive,” Taipans Head Coach Adam Forde explained.

“I think we’ll line up against the Hawk’s pretty well. I think there’s some areas of easy points that we can look to target, but obviously there’s some things that we need to tidy up ourselves so that we’re not bleeding down the other end.”

Ins and Outs

Taipans

Ins – Kyle Adnam, Tad Dufelmeier, Alex Higgins-Titsha

Outs – Taran Armstrong (ankle), Jackson Makoi

Hawks

Ins - Daniel Grida