Hawks Land Championship Guard Milton Doyle

A championship ring on his hand. An All-NBL First Team selection on his resume. A decade-long habit of being the guy his team hands the ball to when the clock drops under fifteen seconds.

Think back to NBL25. Trey Kell, Tyler Harvey and Davo Hickey, big guards trading buckets in a backcourt that carried us to a championship. That formula is back.

Doyle doesn't fill a roster spot. He fills a role we've already won a title with.

Why This Signing Matters

Ask yourself what wins finals series in this league. It's a guard who doesn't blink with the ball in his hands in the fourth quarter. Doyle has been that guard for three different clubs in three different countries in the space of eighteen months.

The numbers back it up. 15.9 points, 4.3 assists, 4.6 rebounds a game across 131 NBL appearances. An 83.6 per cent free-throw shooter, which means when a game comes down to the stripe, we now have a player who has made a career out of not missing there. Career highs of 33 points, 11 assists and 8 made threes in a single outing show what the ceiling looks like on his best nights.

We already had Tyler Harvey's clutch scoring and Davo Hickey's two-way versatility. Now we have a third guard who has closed out an NBL Grand Final series and lived to tell the story.

Chief Operations Officer, Basketball Mat Campbell said "Milton was a name we kept coming back to. He's proven he can be the guy in the biggest moments, a Grand Final winner, an All-NBL First Team player, and someone who has delivered wherever he's gone. Slotting him alongside Tyler and Davo gives us a backcourt who have all won a recent championship. We think Hawkheads are going to love what he brings to WIN Entertainment Centre this season."

A Champion Who Keeps Delivering

In 2023/24, Doyle helped Tasmania claim the NBL24 championship, beating Melbourne United 3-2 in the Grand Final series. The year before that, he was named to the All-NBL First Team and won the JackJumpers' club MVP award in his very first NBL season.

Across three seasons in Tasmania he played 96 games and averaged 15.8 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.3 assists. When he left, the club's chief operating officer Darren Smith said it plainly: "He's been a big part of our club for the last three years and we thank him for everything he has given during his time with us."

Melbourne United saw the same thing when they signed him for NBL26. Head coach Dean Vickerman called him a player who could "close games as well as anyone" and act as "another coach on the floor" because of his basketball IQ. Doyle delivered, averaging 16.2 points, 4.3 assists and 3.6 rebounds across 35 games, with a season-high 28 points against Brisbane and an NBL league-leading eight double-digit fourth quarters.

A Long Way From Chicago

This is a guard who has never needed a settled address to be dangerous. Marshall High School in Chicago. Kansas, briefly, then Loyola. An NBA debut with Brooklyn on 26th December 2017. Then Spain, Israel, Italy, Turkey, three NBL seasons, Puerto Rico, and this year, a stint with Napoli in Italy's Serie A, where he played eight games at 12.8 points a night helping the club fight off relegation.

Every stop, the same story. A team needed a guard who could be trusted with the ball in the biggest moments, and Doyle answered.

The Big Guard Formula, Reloaded

Three big guards won us a championship in NBL25. Doyle makes three again, because Mat Campbell and Justin Tatum know exactly what wins finals basketball in this league.

Seasons in Numbers

• ‍2022/23 (Tasmania): 31 games, 17.2 pts, 5.0 reb, 3.7 ast | All-NBL First Team, Club MVP. ‍
• 2023/24 (Tasmania): 36 games, 15.7 pts, 5.0 reb, 4.8 ast | All-NBL Second Team, NBL Champion. ‍
• 2024/25 (Tasmania): 29 games, 14.6 pts, 4.9 reb, 4.2 ast. ‍
• 2025/26 (Melbourne United): 35 games, 16.2 pts, 3.6 reb, 4.3 ast.

131 NBL games. 15.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, 4.3 assists a game for his career.

What's Ahead

You are about to watch a champion guard walk into a backcourt built for someone exactly like him. We have the formula. Now we have the player to run it.

Be one of us too

A champion guard in red, black and white, and from today he's one of us.

Sixteen home games, all season, right here in Wollongong.

However you follow the Hawks, there's a membership built for you. Full Season gets you into every one of those 16 nights. Flexi 5 gets you into any 5, your call, whenever suits.

Be a Hawkhead, because there's no wrong way to show up, only a right one for you.

Roster Situation

Todd Blanchfield, Darius Days*, Amarco Doyle (DP), Milton Doyle*, Sam Froling, Daniel Grida, Tyler Harvey, Davo Hickey, Johny Narkle, Mason Peatling, Wani Swaka Lo Buluk.

*pending NBL approval

Preseason at The Snakepit | Hawks vs Saint Mary's Gaels (California)

Thursday 13th August. Doors 6:15pm. Tip-off 7:00pm.  

The Snakepit hosts the Illawarra Hawks against Saint Mary's Gaels of California, and this is more than a warm-up game. It's the first look at the roster that carries the red and black through NBL27, and it's a night stitched together by more Hawks connections than any preseason fixture we've hosted in years.

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STRONGER. LOUDER. TOGETHER.