"This has got to stop": Lowery calls out Hawks

Former Illawarra Hawk Damon Lowery has called for Jacob Jackomas to take a hard line with his team, following the side’s Round 3 loss to Adelaide.

After enduring a 3-25 NBL23 season, the Hawks have opened the new campaign with just one win from their opening four games, with that victory coming against a South East Melbourne side lacking in a fit fully-rostered center. 

The Hawks re-tooled ahead of the new campaign with the acquisition of sought-after import Gary Clark, emerging talent Lachlan Olbrich and the re-signing of Justin Robinson, but have struggled to contain teams to less than 100 points per game.

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“It’s time to grab a couple of those dudes by the scruff and say ‘listen here fellas, you tried’ but they reverted back to themselves – the worst version of themselves,” Lowery said on NBL Now.

“It’s like they can’t get out of their own way. They went hard for the first half and I thought I had never seen this team play like that before. With discipline, with offensive execution, with no craziness.

“Then all of a sudden as soon as the game was kind of there to be won, and it got tight, they defaulted back to their old ways and those ways are not going to get any wins.

“It’s time for some really hard truths, I know they want to come out in press conferences, say the right things, circle the wagons – I get all of that – but behind closed doors here had better be some scruffing of some collars going on, because this has got to stop.”

Lowery’s sentiments follow Jackomas’ comments that he was happier with his team's performance than the earlier Round 3 loss to Tasmania.

“In Tassie all we did was run and cough the ball up but we won the rebound count. Today all we did was move it around and we didn’t cough the ball up and we lost the rebound count,” Jackomas said in his post-match press conference.

“Right now, it’s finding a balance between both, and we don’t have it yet.

“If you asked me after the Tasmania game I’d be really worried, right now there’s obviously concern but it’s too early in the year to start getting desperate.”

Illawarra host the ladder-leading Melbourne United on Friday night in its only game of the round.