Illawarra climbed to equal first after dominant wins as Albury’s rebuilding season continued.<\/p>\n
The Illawarra Hawks continued their push towards the 2026 NBL1 East Men’s finals as they defeated the Albury Wodonga Bandits 93-73 at home in the Snakepit, bouncing back after last weekend’s loss. <\/p>\n
For the Bandits, the loss was their fourth consecutive defeat, piling onto what has been a tumultuous season so far. I was able to speak to caretaker head coach Matthew “Harry” Morgan before the game, who said there was a clear positive outlook on what the experience meant for his young group.<\/p>\n
“We try and stick to our game plan,” Morgan said. <\/p>\n
“We’ve got a lot of young guys in our team, so we look at it as a great opportunity to play against the best players in the competition. It comes back to just hard catches, denying the ball, just the hard stuff.”<\/p>\n
That approach showed in the result. Reigning NBL1 East MVP Todd Blanchfield, who is chasing back to back awards this season, was held to just 19 points on 8 from 18 shooting, going 2 from 10 from three. By his standards, a quiet night.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t enough to halt the Hawks’ high-octane, motion heavy offence and proved too deep for the young Bandits to contain. While their defensive rotations did a good job of limiting the Hawks usual 3 point barrage, Illawarra was able to get downhill and score in the paint. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Matt Mims finished with 25 points and seven assists, while Mohamed Kone contributed 20 points and three steals. The game was effectively decided by a devastating 20-0 Hawks run in the second quarter that turned a competitive contest into a rout. <\/p>\n
In a losing effort, Kevion Blaylock was the Bandits’ standout finishing with 20 points and 11 rebounds. <\/p>\n
Morgan was measured but honest about what a season like this one can bring to an organisation. <\/p>\n
“We want to develop our young guys, but we still want to try and win games,” he said. <\/p>\n
“It becomes a little bit of a juggling act.”<\/p>\n
Sunday night’s games in the NBL1 doubleheader weekend brought much of the same. The Illawarra Hawks crushed the Sydney Comets 102-79 with Mims leading the way with 23 points. This time, the Hawks shooting was lights out as they nailed 17 shots from beyond the arc at a 57% clip. <\/p>\n
The win brings the Hawks to first place on the NBL1 east ladder, matching the North Bears\u2019 14-3 record. <\/p>\n
The Bandits meanwhile lost in a bottom of the table clash against the Penrith Panthers, losing 98-91 despite Baylock\u2019s 36.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Illawarra climbed to equal first after dominant wins as Albury’s rebuilding season continued. The Illawarra Hawks continued their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-786653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}