Hawks aim for road trip clean sweep against Breakers

The Illawarra Hawks will look to clean sweep their two-game road trip when they take on the New Zealand Breakers in Hobart on Wednesday.

After easily accounting for the Cairns Taipans on Saturday, Brian Goorjian's side will take plenty of confidence into their MyState Bank Arena.

The last time these teams played in round three was one of the games of the season with the match needing double-overtime and a Tyler Harvey game-winner to get the Hawks home 97-96.

The Hawks were 3-0 after their cliffhanger win over the Breakers but in the seven games played since are yet to win consecutive games. 

That victory took the Hawks to a 34-33 all-time advantage over the Breakers.

The round 10 fixture in Hobart will mark the fifth different venue these teams have played at in their last six meetings and the second in Tasmania - with the Hawks downing the Breakers  75-67 at the Silverdome in Launceston in round 16 of NBL21.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The ? chalks up 50 games as ? coach??<br><br>?: <a href="https://t.co/80cxnwuTDa">https://t.co/80cxnwuTDa</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeAreIllawarra?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WeAreIllawarra</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FlyAsOne?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FlyAsOne</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBL22?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBL22</a> <a href="https://t.co/Rt6phzenj9">pic.twitter.com/Rt6phzenj9</a></p>&mdash; Illawarra Hawks Basketball (@illawarrahawks) <a href="https://twitter.com/illawarrahawks/status/1488659116893814784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 1, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This game will also mark Goorjian's 50th in charge of the Hawks - who are now 6-4 on the season.

On the flip side, Dan Shamir's side is 2-8, which equals their worst-ever start to a season - matching their debut campaign in 2004, which extended to 2-10 before they chalked up their third victory.

The Breakers have played in Hobart three times for three losses, twice to the Jack Jumpers and once to Melbourne United.  

In their most recent defeat to Tasmania on Sunday, New Zealand scored just 59 points which was their lowest score in the 73 games played under Shamir and the 24-point loss (83-59) was their equal biggest of the season.

Contrasting in Cairns, the Hawks posted 94 points in a 19-point win over the Taipans – their biggest winning margin of the season - sparked by their highest-scoring half in NBL22 (51 points in the second stanza).

On the back of this, the Hawks are the league's highest-scoring team at 89.5 points per game, while averaging the most threes made per game at 10.6 

The Breakers average 77.6 points per game and are the worst three-point shooting team at 28.3 per cent - representing a career-worst mark, with no team shooting worse than 32 per cent from long range during their previous 18 seasons.

Tip-off for the closed-door match, which can be viewed on ESPN via Kayo Sports and Foxtel, is at 7.30pm AEDT.